LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OP 
CAUPaflN;^ 
SAN  DIEGO 


THE 

AMERICAN    REVOLUTION 
VOL.  I 


By  SIR  G.  0.  TREVELYAN,  Bart.,  O.M. 


THE  AMERICAN   REVOLUTION 

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THE  AMERICAN    REVOLUTION 

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GEORGE  THE  THIRD   AND   CHARLES   FOX 

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NEW  YORK:  LONGMANS,  GREEN,  AND  CO. 


*i 


THE 


AMERICAN    REVOLUTION 


BY  THE  RIGHT  HON. 

SIR  GEORGE  OTTO  TREVELYAN,  BART. 

AUTHOR   OF  "THE  LIFE  AND   LETTERS  OF  LORD   MACAU  LA  Y  " 
AND   "THE   EARLY   HISTORY  OF  CHARLES  JAMES   FOX" 


NEW  EDITION 

VOLUME  I 

WITH   FRONTISPIECE 
NEW  IMPRESSION 


LONGMANS,   GREEN,   AND   CO. 

FOURTH   AVENUE  &  30TH    STREET,  NEW  YORK 
LONDON,  BOMBAY,  CALCUTTA,  AND  MADRAS 


COPYRIGHT,  1898,  BY 
LONGMANS,  GREEN,  AND  CO. 

COPYRIGHT,  1904,  BY 
LONGMANS,  GREEN,  AND  CO. 

COPYRIGHT,  1905,  BY 
LONGMANS,   GREEN,  AND   CO. 


ALL   RIGHTS    RESERVED. 

First  Edition  (Part  I.)  printed  January,  1899. 

Reprinted  October,  1899,  and  December,  1903. 

New  Edition  (Volume  I.),  Revised  and  Rearranged,  January,  1905. 

Reprinted  May,  1908,  September,  1909,  and  January,  1913. 

Reprinted,  with  Revisions,  April,  1917. 


Nortoooti 

J.  8.  Gushing  &  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 
Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


THESE  VOLUMES  ARE  DEDICATED 

TO  THE  BELOVED  MEMORY 

OF 
EDWARD    ERNEST    BOWEN 

AND 

HENRY    SIDGWICK 


"  Animce,  quales  neque  candidiores 
Terra  tulit,  neque  queis  me  sit  devinctior  alter." 


PREFACE 

THE  "  History  of  the  American  Revolution "  has 
been  received  with  a  degree  of  favour  greatly  surpass- 
ing the  expectations  of  the  writer.  Americans,  espe- 
cially, have  learned  with  pleasure  the  brotherly  feelings 
entertained  towards  the  colonists,  from  the  beginning 
to  the  end  of  the  controversy,  by  a  very  large  section 
of  the  British  people.  The  author  has  received  assur- 
ances to  that  effect  from  historical  students  and  writers, 
and  from  Statesmen  at  Washington  of  the  highest  au- 
thority, in  private  letters  which  it  would  not  be  becom- 
ing to  print ;  and  the  same  view  has  been  developed  by 
many  leading  newspapers  in  the  States.  One  passage, 
from  a  well-known  New  York  journal,  may  be  extracted 
as  a  fair  specimen  of  a  very  great  number  of  these 
opinions.  "We  have  been  able  to  reproduce  only  a 
small  part  of  the  evidence  brought  forward  by  Sir 
George  Trevelyan  to  show  that  the  majority  of  the 
British  people  were  opposed  to  the  attempt  to  coerce 
the  American  Colonies.  In  our  opinion,  all  candid 
readers  of  the  two  volumes  will  acknowledge  that  he 
has  proved  his  case.  It  would  not  be  easy  to  over- 
estimate the  effect  which  such  a  demonstration  ought 
to  have,  and  doubtless  will  have,  on  the  feeling  with 


viii  PREFACE 

which  Americans  will  hereafter  regard  Great  Britain. 
It  is  manifest  that  most  of  our  school  histories  of  the 
United  States  will  have  to  be  rewritten,  for  the  major 
part  of  them  fail  to  recognize  the  momentous  truth 
which  the  work  before  us  must  be  held  to  have 
established." 

The  only  return  for  such  indulgence,  which  the  author 
can  make,  is  to  do  his  best  to  deserve  it.  He  com- 
menced the  book  mainly  for  the  personal  pleasure  of 
writing  about  events  which  had  always  attracted  and 
moved  him ;  and  he  is  conscious  that  the  First  Part, 
which  was  published  in  1899,  made  its  appearance 
originally  in  a  defective  form.  That  First  Part  has 
now  been  completely  re-arranged  and  somewhat  re- 
written, and  henceforward  will  stand  as  the  First  Vol- 
ume of  the  "  History  of  the  American  Revolution."  A 
small  amount  of  irrelevant  matter  has  been  expunged, 
and  some  important,  (and  it  is  hoped  not  uninteresting,) 
touches  have  been  added.  The  chapters  are  consecu- 
tively numbered  throughout  the  volumes,  which  form  a 
continuous  and  sustained  history  of  the  period  whereof 
they  treat. 

Something  has  been  said  in  both  countries  about  the 
absence  of  a  printed  list  of  the  authorities  consulted ; 
but  reflection  will  show  that  the  composition  of  such  a 
list  would  be  undesirable  and,  indeed,  impossible.  No 
one  could  aspire  to  write  a  history  of  the  American 
Revolution  who  had  not  read,  and  re-read,  many  scores 


PREFACE  ix 

of  books  from  cover  to  cover;  who  had  not  examined 
and  indexed  several  hundreds  of  other  volumes ;  and 
who  had  not  looked  into,  or  through,  an  innumerable 
multitude  of  memoirs,  pamphlets,  newspapers,  maga- 
zines, poems,  and  collections  of  printed  and  unprinted 
documents.  The  material  for  such  a  work  is  every- 
where ;  and  the  collection  of  that  material  has  been 
to  the  author  at  first  the  unconscious,  and  of  late  the 
conscious,  occupation  and  delight  of  a  lifetime.  To 
print  a  list  of  those  books  from  which  something  has 
been  taken,  —  and  those  which  have  been  turned  over 
with  no  result  except  to  find  the  confirmation  of  what 
had  been  learned  already, —  might  well  be  regarded  as 
ostentatious ;  and  most  readers  will  excuse,  and  proba- 
bly applaud,  the  omission.  Wherever  specially  impor- 
tant assistance  has  been  derived  from  any  author, 
whether  living  or  dead,  full  and  grateful  recognition 
is  expressed  in  the  notes  throughout  the  volumes. 

WELCOMES, 
STRATFORD-ON-AVON, 


CONTENTS 

OF  VOLUME  I 
CHAPTER  I 

PAGE 

Effect  of  the  Repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act  on  American  Sentiment  i 
Forces  in  British  Politics  which  worked  against  a  Permanent 

Reconciliation .  2 

Fall  of  Rockingham  ;  Townshend's  Custom  Duties          .         .  4 

Protests  from  America ;  their  Reception  by  the  Government  .  7 

Troops  sent  to  Boston 1 1 

Causes  of  the  Want  of  Acquaintance  with  America  which  pre- 
vailed in  England 12 

Difficulties  of  Communication 12 

The  Colonial  Governors 14 

Want  of  Sympathy  between  the  Rulers  and  the  Ruled     .         .  18 

Sudden  Increase  of  Luxury  in  Great  Britain    ....  20 

Fighting  Qualities  of  our  Aristocracy 24 

Impression  produced  on  the  Young  French  Nobles  by  the 

Society  in  America 25 

Contrast  with  Europe 27 

The  Middle  Class  in  Great  Britain 29 

Education  in  America 31 

Eton  and  the  English  Universities 32 

CHAPTER   II 

John  Adams 36 

Benjamin  Franklin           .                 ......  42 

xi 


xii  CONTENTS 


Other  Leaders  of  the  American  Revolution      .        .        .  5 l 

',  George  Washington 53 

Loyalty  of  Americans  to  the  King 5  6 

Their  Attachment  to  the  Mother  Country        ....  58 

Their  Admiration  of  Lord  Chatham 60 

Part  played  by  the  Colonies  in  Chatham's  War        .         .         .61 

Social  Conditions  iri  America -63 

American  Women 67 

CHAPTER   III 

Dangers  of  the  Ministerial  Policy 7° 

Lawyers  in  America         ........  72 

The  Non-importation  Agreement 74 

Political   Offenders   in  America   made    liable  to   be  tried  in 

England 75 

Boston  occupied  by  the  Troops 78 

Ill-feeling  between  Royal  and  Provincial  Military  Officers  .  80 
Hostility  to  the  Army  among  the  Townsmen  ;  and  the  Causes 

of  it 85 

.The  Boston  Massacre 89 

Acquittal  of  Captain  Preston 91 

An  Opportunity  of  Pacification  lost ;  Grafton  and  the  Tea-duty  92 

Manufactures  in  Great  Britain  and  America  ....  96 
How  the  Revenue  Laws  were  observed  at  Home  and  in  the 

Colonies  ..........  98 

Admiral  Montagu  ;  Affair  of  the  Schooner  Gaspee  .  .  .  102 
Payment  of  American  Judges  by  the  Crown ;  Massachusetts 

objects  to  the  Proposal 104 

The  East  India  Company;  Resistance  to  the  Importation  of 

the  Tea .        .        .        .  106 

CHAPTER  IV 

Shock  produced  on   British   Opinion  by  the  Tidings  from 

America no 


CONTENTS  Xiii 

TAGK 

Elimination  from  the  Cabinet  of  All  Independent  Elements; 

Granby's  Death        .        . 1 1 1 

Pliability  of  the  Ministers  ;  Lord  Gower;  Lord  Barrington     .  113 

Lord  Dartmouth 115 

Burke  incites  the  Whig  Aristocracy  to  oppose  the  System  of 

Personal  Government 119 

Inertness  of  the  Opposition     .         .         .         .         .  .     123 

Burke's  Activity  and  Energy ;    Dr.  Markham ;    Lord  George 

Germaine          .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .126 


.Burke  and  Parliamentary  Reform 132 

'  The  Absentee  Tax 133 

Chatham  in  the  House  of  Lords 135 

Retirement  of  Charles  Fox  from  Office    .        .        .        .         .  137 

His  Political  Career  apparently  ruined 138 

His  Debts  discharged      .         .         .        .        .        .        .         .140 

Character  of  his  Correspondence 143 

His  Repentance 146 

Deaths  in  the  Holland  Family 147 

The  Ministers  whom  Fox  had  left 148 

The  Rockingham  Whigs 150 

Fox's  Way  of  Life  and  Choice  of  Friends        .        .        .        -151 

Advent  of  the  American  Question 154 


CHAPTER  V 

.Franklin  in  London         , 155 

The  Massachusetts  Letters .157 

The  Government  resolve  to  make  an  Example  of  Boston         .  163 
Proceedings  in  Parliament ;  the  Boston  Port  Bill ;  the  Bill  for 

altering  the  Government  of  Massachusetts        .         .         .  166 

Intolerant  Conduct  of  the  Majority           .....  169 

Self-effacement  of  the  Opposition    .         .         .        .»        •         .  173 

The  Part  taken  by  Charles  Fox       .         .        •        .        »  '     .  174 

The  Bills  are  passed I78 


xiv  CONTENTS 

PACK 

Effect  of  the  News  in  Boston *79 

Blockade  of  the  Harbour J8o 

roposal  for  a  Congress J82 

Massachusetts  supports  Boston 183 

Severities  exercised  against  the  Loyalists         .        .        .        .186 

The  Other  Colonies  sustain  Massachusetts  .  .  .  .190 
Journey  of  the  Massachusetts  Delegates  to  Philadelphia  .  .190 
History  of  the  First  Congress 195 

CHAPTER  VI 

Parliament  dissolved  ;  Grenville's  Electoral  Act  .  .  .199 
George  the  Third  and  the  Conduct  of  Elections  .  .  .201 

Fox  and  his  Seat 205 

Burke  at  Bristol 207 

Country  Gentlemen  in  Parliament 209 

Charles  Fox  a  Favourite  with  the  House  of  Commons      .         .217 

Opening  of  the  Winter  Session ;  Wilkes  a  Member  of  Par- 
liament      218 

Presentation  of  Papers  about  America 221 

The  Poet  Laureate 222 

CHAPTER   VII 

The  King's  Sentiments  about  America 225 

Attitude  of  Chatham  and  of  Fox 226 

Public  Anxiety  aroused  by  the  Intelligence  from  the  Colonies  231 
Fox  moves  an  Amendment  to  the  Address  ;  Gibbon's  Estimate 

of  his  Performance  ........  235 

Lord  North  attempts  to  meet  Fox's  Point  of  View  .  .  .  238 
Tumultuous  Scene  in  the  House  of  Commons ;  Sir  Gilbert 

Elliot 240 

Bill  to  exclude  the  Colonists  from  the  American  Fisheries        .  243 

Consternation  among  Men  of  Business    .....  245 

Debates  in  Parliament ;  Burke  ;  Fox ;  Henry  Dundas      .         .  246 

The  Colonists  taunted  with  Cowardice  by  the  Ministers  .         .  250 


CONTENTS  XV 
CHAPTER   VIII 

PAGE 

Franklin,  in  Concert  with  Lord  Chatham,  makes  a  Last  Effort 

for  Conciliation         . 254 

Failure  of  the  Attempt ;  Franklin  sails  for  Home     .         .         .  257 

Amherst  refuses  to  command  in  America         ....  259 

The  Major-Generals  ;  William  Howe  ;  Burgoyne ;  Clinton      .  261 

*  Incapacity  of  Gage 264 

Gage  seizes  Military  Stores  at  Cambridge        ....  266 

The  Patriots  on  the  Alert 269 

Singular  Condition  of  New  England 270 

Proceedings  of  the  Massachusetts  Congress     ....  271 

Growing  Irritation  of  the  British  Army 276 

State  of  Things  inside  Boston 277 

Royal  Officers  underrate  the  Soldiership  of  Colonists       .         .  280 
Military  Expeditions  into  the  Country  Districts ;  Marshfield ; 

Marblehead 282 

Adventures  of  a  British  Officer 283 

he  British  march  on  Concord ;   Lexington ;  the  Retreat  to 

Charlestown     .         .         .         r       .         ....  286 

Washington's  Opinion  of  the  Affair 289 

CHAPTER   IX 

Massachusetts  asks  for  Help ;  New  England  flies  to  Arms       .  291 

Investment  of  Boston 292 

••''   The  Major-Generals  arrive ;  Burgoyne 295 

The  Tactical  Situation    . 

The  Americans  occupy  the  Peninsula  of  Charlestown      .        .  301 

The  British  resolve  to  drive  them  out 303 

The  Assailants  twice  repulsed ;    Howe  prepares  for  a  Third 

Attack      .        ..'-.. 309 

Confusion  in  Rear  of  the  American  Position    ....  310 

The  Redoubt  stormed  ;  Retreat  of  the  Colonists    •«         .         .  312 
Loss  of  the   Two   Armies ;    Effect  of  the   Battle  upon  the 

Revolution  and  the  War.         .        .   ,     .                .  315 


xvj  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  X 

PAGB 

The  Lesson  which  Bunker's  Hill  taught  the  Colonists      .         .  318 

Washington  nominated  to  be  Commander-in-Chief          .         .  320 

He  arrives  at  Cambridge 322 

Camp  of  the  Americans :   their  Dress,  Discipline,  and  Com- 
missariat    324 

Scarcity  within  the  City  of  Boston 329 

Want  of  Fuel 33° 

Difficulties  of  Preserving  the  Morale  of  the  Garrison ;  Bur- 

goyne ;  Lord  Rawdon 332 

ecallofGage;  Howe  takes  the  Command     ....  336 

Activity  of  the  American  Whaleboats 337 

Political  Complexion  of  the   Naval  Appointments   made  by 

Sandwich  ;  Admiral  Graves 339 

Foundation  of  the  American  Navy 340 

Supplies  sent  out  from  England 343 

Burning  of  Falmouth  and  of  Norfolk 344 


CHAPTER  XI 

Washington  foresees  the  Approaching  Dissolution  of  his  Force  348 

He  undertakes  the  Formation  of  a  Continental  Army       .         .  349 
Conduct   of  the   Connecticut    Militia;    Want    of  Arms    and 

Ammunition     .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .  351 

Impatience  of  the  Country  ;  Washington's  Firmness        .         .  354 

The  Ranks  of  the  Continental  Army  begin  to  fill     .         .         .  356 

Capture  of  the  Nancy      ........  357 

The  King's  Speech  reaches  Boston 359 

Howe  meditates  the  Evacuation  of  the  City     ....  361 

S    Washington  obtains  a  Train  of  Artillery          ....  364 

He  seizes  the  Peninsula  of  Dorchester     .....  367 

A  Battle  threatened 369 

Occupation  of  Nook's  Hill ;  Washington  at  Boston,  and  Napo- 
leon at  Toulon 371 


CONTENTS  xvii 


Emigration  of  the  Loyalists 373 

Their  Character  and   Manners ;    their  Attitude   towards  the 

Adherents  of  the  Opposite  Party 375 

Rumour  that  Boston  was  to  be  burned 380 

The  British  abandon  Boston 383 

jr  Entrance  of  the  American  Army ;  Joy  and  Relief  of  the 

Citizens   .         .         .         .         .         .         .        .        .         .  384 

Capture  of  British  Transports  ;  Restoration  of  the  Castle  .  386 
Remark  of  Frederic  the  Great;  Conduct  and  Result  of  the 

Campaign 388 


APPENDICES 

I.     Eton  in  the  Days  of  Charles  Fox  .         .  391 

II.     Fox's  Letters  to  his  Mother    .         .        .        .        .        .     392 

III.     Franklin,  and  the  Signing  of  the  Treaty  with  France      .     394 

At  the  End  of  the  Volume 
Map  of  Boston  with  its  Environs. 


i      O  thou,  that  sendest  out  the  man 

To  rule  by  land  and  sea, 
Strong  mother  of  a  Lion-line, 
Be  proud  of  those  strong  sons  of  thine 
Who  wrench 'd  their  rights  from  thee  ! 

TENNYSON. 


THE   AMERICAN    REVOLUTION 


CHAPTER   I 

THE  TEA-DUTY.  THE  BRITISH  POLICY  TOWARDS  AMER- 
ICA. THE  COLONIAL  GOVERNORS.  SOCIAL  CONDITION 
OF  GREAT  BRITAIN  AND  THE  COLONIES 

IN  the  spring  of  1766  a  new  chapter  of  peace  and 
good-will,  —  the  first,  as  it  seemed,  of  many  fair  volumes, 
—  had  opened  before  the  delighted  eyes  of  all  true 
fellow-countrymen  on  either  side  of  the  Atlantic.  "  We 
should  find  it  hard,"  so  writes  an  excellent  and  learned 
author,  "  to  overstate  the  happiness  which,  for  a  few 
weeks,  filled  the  hearts  of  the  American  people  at  the 
news  that  the  detested  Stamp  Act  had  been  repealed. 
As,  in  1765,  through  the  bond  of  a  common  fear,  the 
thirteen  colonies  had  been  brought  for  the  first  time  into 
some  sort  of  union,  so,  in  1766,  that  union  was  for  a 
while  prolonged  through  the  bond  of  a  common  joy. 
Certainly,  never  before  had  all  these  American  com- 
munities been  so  swept  by  one  mighty  wave  of  grateful 
enthusiasm  and  delight."  l 

No  citizen  of  America,  who  recollected  anything,  for- 
got how  and  where  he  heard  the  glad  tidings.  Her 
history,  for  a  year  to  come,  reads  like  the  golden  age. 
Philadelphia  waited  for  the  fourth  of  June  in  order  to 
celebrate  the  King's  Birthday,  and  the  repeal  of  the 

1  Professor  Tyler's  Literary  History  of  the  American  Revolution.  This 
book  is  a  remarkable  specimen  of  the  historical  faculty,  and  the  descriptive 
power,  which  have  been  expended  by  Americans  on  particular  features  in 
that  great  panorama. 

VOL.  I.  B 


2  THE  AMERICAN  DEVOLUTION 

Stamp  Act,  together.  Toasts  were  drunk  to  the  Royal 
Family,  to  Parliament,  and  to  "  our  worthy  and  faithful 
agent,  Dr.  Franklin."  Franklin,  determined  that  his 
household  should  rejoice  in  real  earnest,  sent  his  wife 
and  daughter  a  handsome  present  of  satins  and  brocades, 
to  replace  the  clothes  of  their  own  spinning  which  they 
had  worn  while  the  crisis  lasted,  and  while  all  good 
patriots  refused  to  buy  anything  that  had  come  from 
British  ports.  John  Adams  kept  the  occasion  sadly. 
"  A  duller  day  than  last  Monday,  when  the  Province 
was  in  a  rapture  for  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act,  I  do 
not  remember  to  have  passed.  My  wife,  who  had  long 
depended  on  going  to  Boston,  and  my  little  babe,  were 
both  very  ill  of  an  whooping-cough."  But,  in  his  view, 
the  great  concession  had  done  its  work  thoroughly  and 
finally.  In  November  1766,  after  six  months'  observa- 
tion of  its  effects,  he  wrote  :  "  The  people  are  as  quiet 
and  submissive  to  Government  as  any  people  under  the 
sun ;  as  little  inclined  to  tumults,  riots,  seditions,  as  they 
were  ever. known  to  be  since  the  first  foundation  of  the 
Government.  The  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act  has  com- 
posed every  wave  of  popular  disorder  into  a  smooth  and 
peaceful  calm." 

The  mother-country  had  erred,  had  suffered,  had  re- 
pented, and  had  now  retrieved  her  fault.  Parliament,  at 
the  instance  of  Lord  Rockingham  and  his  colleagues, 
embodied  in  a  statute  the  assertion  of  its  own  right  to 
make  laws  binding  on  the  colonies  in  all  cases  whatso- 
ever ;  and  then  it  repealed  the  Stamp  Act,  as  a  practical 
admission  that  the  right  in  question  should  be  exercised 
only  in  cases  where  the  colonies  did  not  object.  The 
proceeding  was  intensely  English ;  but  unfortunately  it 
lacked  the  most  important  condition  of  a  great  English 
compromise,  for  it  was  not  accepted  by  the  beaten  party. 
George  Grenville,  the  parent  of  the  Stamp-duty,  and 
reputed  to  be  the  greatest  living  master  of  finance,  bit- 
terly resented  the  reversal  of  his  policy ;  and  he  spoke 
the  views  of  a  very  powerful  minority  of  the  Commons. 
In  the  other  House  a  Protest  was  carefully  drawn  with 


THE    TEA-DUTY  3 

the  purpose  of  defying,  and  insulting,  what  was  then 
the  unanimous  opinion  of  Americans.  It  was  signed 
by  a  body  of  lay  peers,  respectable  at  any  rate  in  num- 
bers, and  by  five  bishops,  who  wrote  their  names  between 
those  of  Sandwich  and  Weymouth  like  men  so  sure  of 
their  cause  that  there  was  no  need  to  be  nice  about  their 
company.  Warburton  of  Gloucester,  the  ablest  and  by 
far  the  most  distinguished  among  them,  has  left  on 
record  his  own  view  of  the  duty  of  a  father  of  the  Church 
when  dealing  with  affairs  of  State  ;  and  the  theory  which 
satisfied  him  was  good  enough  for  his  brethren.  "  Let 
us  private  men,"  he  wrote,  when  already  a  bishop,  "pre- 
serve and  improve  the  little  we  have  left  of  private  vir- 
tue ;  and,  if  one  of  those  infected  with  the  influenza  of 
politics  should  ask  me,  'What  then  becomes  of  your 
public  virtue  ? '  I  would  answer  him  with  an  old  Spanish 
proverb  :  'The  King  has  enough  for  us  all.'  " 

The  King's  idea  of  public  virtue  at  this  memorable 
conjuncture  was  notorious  everywhere,  and  talked  about 
freely  by  every  one  except  by  the  Ministers,  who,  from 
the  unfortunate  obligations  of  their  position,  were  bound 
to  pretend  to  believe  the  Royal  word.  The  course  of 
action  which  alone  could  secure  peace  and  welfare  to  his 
Empire  had  in  him  an  opponent  more  resolute  and 
bitter  even  than  Grenville.  No  Protest,  phrased  deco- 
rously enough  to  be  admitted  upon  the  Journals  of  the 
House  of  Lords,  could  have  adequately  expressed  the 
sentiments  of  George  the  Third  towards  his  subjects 
beyond  the  water.  On  their  account  the  dislike  which 
he  had  all  along  entertained  for  his  Ministers  had  deep- 
ened into  busy  and  unscrupulous  hostility.  He  looked 
upon  the  conciliation  of  America,  which  those  Ministers 
had  effected,  as  an  act  of  inexpiable  disloyalty  to  the 
Crown.  He  thwarted  them  by  an  intrigue  which  has 
acquired  a  shameful  immortality  from  the  literary  ability 
of  a  statesman  who  suffered  from  it,  and  of  historians 
who  have  recounted  it.  How  the  King,  acting  through 
the  King's  Friends,  harassed  and  hampered  the  King's 
Ministers  during  the  debates  on  the  Stamp  Act,  is  told 

B2 


4  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

by  Burke  in  the  "  Thoughts  on  the  Discontents,"  and  by 
MacauTay  iifThe  second  Essay  on  Chatham ;  and  seldom 
ornever  did  either  of  them  write  more  pointedly  and 
powerfully.  The  process  is  concisely  described  by  Mr. 
Lecky,  in  the  twelfth  chapter  of  his  History.  "  When 
the  measure  was  first  contemplated,  two  partisans  of 
Bute  came  to  the  King,  offering  to  resign  their  places, 
as  they  meant  to  oppose  the  repeal ;  but  they  were  told 
that  they  might  keep  their  places  and  vote  as  they 
pleased.  The  hint  was  taken,  and  the  King's  Friends 
were  among  the  most  active,  though  not  the  most  con- 
spicuous, opponents  of  the  Ministers." 

When,  in  spite  of  his  efforts,  the  work  of  pacification 
was  accomplished,  George  the  Third  never  forgave  his 
wise  and  faithful  servants  for  having  saved  him  from 
himself.  Determined  to  punish,  he  fell  diligently  to 
the  task  of  finding  an  instrument ;  and  he  soon  was  able 
to  place  his  hand  on  a  noble  weapon,  which  he  used 
with  remarkable  skill  in  a  very  bad  cause.  The  love  of 
Britain  for  Pitt  was  not  stronger  than  the  aversion  with 
which,  in  life,  and  after  death,  he  was  regarded  by 
Britain's  sovereign.  But  at  this  crisis  the  great  Com- 
moner was  recommended  to  the  Royal  notice  by  the 
circumstance,  which  was  unhappily  notorious,  that  he 
looked  coldly  upon  the  statesmen  whom  George  the 
Third  hated ;  and,  as  soon  as  the  King  was  sure  of  Pitt, 
he  got  quit  of  Rockingham.  Under  cover  of  a  name 
which  has  elevated  and  adorned  the  annals  of  our  Par- 
liament, was  formed  a  bad  and  foolish  administration 
which  woefully  misdirected  our  national  policy.  That 
tissue  of  scrapes  and  scandals  which  marked  their  con- 
duct of  home  affairs  belongs  to  a  period  when  Chatham 
was  no  longer  in  office  ;  but  the  most  disastrous  and 
gratuitous  of  their  blunders  abroad  dates  from  the  time 
when  he  still  was  nominally  Prime  Minister.  On  the 
second  of  June,  1767,  a  series  of  Resolutions  were 
passed  in  Committee  of  Ways  and  Means,  imposing 
duties  upon  a  number  of  commodities  admitted  into  the 
British  colonies  and  plantations  in  America ;  and  it  was 


THE    TEA-DUTY 


the  seventeenth  of  these  Resolutions  which  provided 
"  That  a  duty  of  ^d.  per  pound-weight  avoirdupois  be 
laid  upon  all  tea  imported  into  the  said  colonies  and 
plantations." 

It  is  a  measure  of  the  greatness  of  Chatham  that,  citi-, 
zen  and  subject  as  he  was,  his  opinions  and  predilec- 
tions, nay  his  very  moods  and  prejudices,  affected  the 
general  course  of  events  as  deeply  as  it  has,  ever  or  any- 
where, been  affected  by  the  character  of  the  most  power- 
ful monarchs  who  have  had  an  absolute  hold  on  the 
resources  and  policy  of  a  State.  Just  as  the  history  of 
Germany  would  have  run  in  other  channels  if  Frederic 
the  Great  had  not  been  King  of  Prussia  at  the  death  of 
the  Emperor  Charles  the  Sixth;  just  as  Spain  would 
have  been  spared  untold  calamities  if  any  one  but 
Napoleon  had  been  on  the  throne  of  France  when 
Ferdinand  quarrelled  with  his  father;  so  the  fortunes 
of  the  English-speaking  world  would  haVe~  looked  very 
different  in  the  retrospect  if  only  Chatham  had  been  in 
the~miricl  to  act  cordially  with  the  right  men  at  the  right 
moment.  With  Rockingham  as  his  second  in  command, 

—  with  Lord  John  Cavendish,  or  Dowdeswell,  or,  (still 
better,)  with  Burke  as  his  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer, 

—  he  might  have  lingered  in  the  retirement,  to  which  hisi 
shattered  health  inclined  him,  without  any  damage  to 
the  public  interest  or  to  his  own  fame.     But  with  Graf- 
ton  dispensing  the  patronage,  and  holding  Cabinets,  in 
his  absence,  and  with  Charles  Townshend  master  of  the 
revels  in  the  House~of  Commons,  the  step  was  taken, 
and  taken  in  the  name  of  Chatham,"  which  in  one  day 
reversed  the  policy  that  he  had  nearest  at  heart,  and 
undid  the  work  of   which   he  was    most   justly  proud. 
The  Boston  Massacre ;  the  horrors  of  the  Indian  war- 
fare ;  the  mutual  cruelties  of  partisans  in  the  Carolinas ; 
Saratoga  and  Yorktown ;  the  French  war ;  the  Spanish 
war ;  the  wholesale  ruin  of  the  American  loyalists ;  the 
animosity  towards  Great  Britain  which  for  so  long  after- 
wards coloured  the  foreign  policy  of  the  United  States ; 

—  all  flowed   in   direct   and   inevitable   sequence  from 


6  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

that  fatal  escapade.  Among  the  bright  possibilities  of 
history,  very  few  can  be  entertained  with  better  show 
of  reason  than  a  belief  that  the  two  nations  might  have 
kept  house  together  with  comfort,  and  in  the  end  might 
have  parted  friends,  if  the  statesman  whom  both  of 
them  equally  revered  and  trusted  would  have  thrown  in  his 
lot  with  that  English  party  which,  almost  to  a  man,  shared 
his  wise  views  in  regard  to  the  treatment  of  our  colonies, 
and  sympathised  with  the  love  which  he  bore  their  people. 

The  first  cardinal  mistake  had  now  been  made,  and 
the  next  was  not  long  in  coming.  British  politicians 
had  much  else  to  talk  of ;  and  the  hardworking,  quiet- 
living  British  people,  after  the  Stamp  Act  was  repealed, 
had  returned  to  their  business,  and  put  America  out  of 
their  thoughts,  as  they  supposed,  for  ever.  They  were 
not  prepared  for  the  instant  and  bewildering  sensation 
which  the  news  of  what  had  been  done  at  Westminster 
produced  across  the  ocean.  It  was,  indeed,  a  rude  awak- 
ening for  the  colonists,  one  and  all,  irrespective  of  class, 
creed,  and  calling.  In  the  assurance  that  past  scores 
were  now  clean  wiped  out,  they  had  settled  themselves 
down  to  the  sober  enjoyment  of  a  victory  which  seemed 
the  more  secure  because  all  concerned  had  their  part  in 
it;  for  if  America  had  carried  her  point,  England  had 
conquered  herself.  And  now,  without  warning,  without 
fresh  reason  given,  the  question  was  reopened  by  the 
stronger  of  the  two  parties  under  circumstances  which 
to  the  weaker  portended  ruin.  The  situation  was  far 
more  ominous  than  if  the  Stamp-duty  had  been  left 
where  it  was.  Parliament,  by  repealing  the  Act,  had 
publicly  recognised  and  admitted  that  the  claim  to  tax 
America  was  one  to  which  America  would  never  submit ; 
and  yet,  a  twelvemonth  afterwards,  that  claim  was  re- 
vived on  a  larger  scale,  and  with  a  deliberation  which 
showed  that  this  time  England  meant  business.  It  was 
impossible  for  the  colonists,  —  who  were  all,  in  a  sort, 
politicians,  one  as  much  as  another,  —  to  understand 
that  the  great  mass  of  Englishmen  attended  seldom  and 


BRITISH  POLICY   TOWARDS  AMERICA  J 

little  to  a  matter  which  for  themselves  was  everything ; 
which  had  exclusively  occupied  their  minds,  and  con- 
sumed their  energies,  during  six  and  thirty  busy  and 
anxious  months ;  and  which,  almost  against  their  will, 
had  taught  them  to  feel  as  a  nation,  to  meet  in  general 
council,  and  to  plan  combined  action. 

But,  if  America  did  not  take  sufficient  account  of  the 
indifference  and  ignorance  of  England  as  a  whole,  her 
instinct  told  her,  and  told  her  rightly,  that  great  men 
behind  the  scenes,  before  they  raised  the  standard  of 
British  supremacy,  had  counted  the  cost,  and  were  now 
fighting  to  win.  Awed  by  the  suddenness  and  magni- 
tude of  the  peril,  the  colonial  leaders  acted  with  circum- 
spection and  rare  self-control.  Abstaining  themselves, 
and  with  notable  success  restraining  their  followers, 
from  the  more  violent  courses  which  had  marked  the 
campaign  against  the  Stamp  Act,  they  undertook  the 
task  of  appealing  to  the  good  sense  and  the  friendliness 
of  the  British  people.  John  Dickinson  of  Pennsylvania, 
so  true  to  England  that  he  lost  all  heart  for  politics  as 
soon  as  a  time  came  when  he  could  no  longer  be  true  to 
England  without  being  disloyal  to  America,  put  the  case 
against  the  Revenue  Acts  with  conclusive  force,  and  in 
attractive  shape.  His  "  Farmer's  Letters,"  having  done 
their  work  at  home,  were  published  by  Franklin  in 
London,  were  translated  into  French,  and  were  read  by 
everybody  in  the  two  capitals  of  civilisation  who  read 
anything  more  serious  than  a  play-bill.  The  members 
of  the  Massachusetts  Assembly  resolutely  and  soberly 
assumed  the  responsibility  of  giving  an  official  voice  to 
the  grievances  of  America.  They  explained  their  con- 
tention in  a  letter  which  their  agent  in  England  was 
directed  to  lay  before  the  British  Cabinet;  and  they 
transmitted  a  Petition  to  the  King,  recounting  the  early 
struggles  of  their  colony,  its  services  to  the  Empire,  the 
rights  and  privileges  with  which  it  had  been  rewarded, 
and  its  recent  intolerable  wrongs.  The  language  used 
was  manly,  simple,  and  even  touching,  if  anything  could 
have  touched  him  whom  they  still  tried  to  regard  as  the 


8  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

father  of  his  people.  The  documents  were  written  in 
draft  by  Samuel  Adams ;  and  one  of  them,  at  least,  was 
revised  no  less  than  seven  times  in  full  conclave  with 
the  object  of  excluding  any  harsh  or  intemperate  ex- 
pression. And  then  they  prepared  themselves  for  the 
very  worst;  because,  though  they  fain  would  hope 
against  hope,  they  only  too  well  knew  that  the  worst 
would  come.  They  addressed  a  circular  letter  to  the 
other  representative  Assemblies  on  the  American  conti- 
nent, urging  them  to  take  such  steps,  within  the  limits 
of  the  Constitution,  as  would  strengthen  the  hands  of  a 
sister  colony  which  had  done  its  duty,  according  to  its 
light,  in  the  presence  of  a  great  emergency,  and  which 
now  ventured  freely  to  make  known  its  mind  to  them 
upon  a  common  concern. 

It  was  all  to  no  purpose.  Their  Petition  was  thrown 
aside  unanswered,  much  as  if  they  had  been  a  meeting 
of  heritors  in  Scotland  who  had  passed  a  resolution  call- 
ing for  the  repeal  of  the  Act  of  Union  during  the  hours 
which  ought  to  have  been  spent  on  parish  business. 
But,  as  regards  the  circular  letter,  even  that  parallel 
could  not  hold ;  for  no  Minister  would  have  treated  the 
humblest  local  body  in  any  of  the  three  Kingdoms  in  the 
style  which  the  Secretary  of  State  employed  in  dealing 
with  the  senates  of  America.1  Lord  Hillsborough  in- 
formed the  Governor  of  Massachusetts  that  her  repre- 
sentatives must  rescind  the  resolution  on  which  that 
audacious  letter  was  based,  or  be  sent  back  to  their 
homes  then  and  there.  The  Assemblies  of  the  twelve 
other  colonies  were  enjoined,  in  so  many  words,  to  take 
no  notice  of  the  appeal  from  Boston,  and  to  treat  it 

1  George  the  Third,  and  his  Cabinet,  were  much  less  wise  in  their  genera- 
tion than  Charles  the  Second,  and  his  Commissioners  of  Trade  and  Plan- 
tations. John  Evelyn,  who  was  on  the  Board,  gives  an  interesting  account 
of  their  first  meeting,  which  took  place  on  the  twenty-sixth  of  May,  1671. 
The  King  specially  recommended  them  to  consider  the  form  in  which  to 
address  the  colony  of  New  England,  where  the  people  were  so  rich,  power- 
ful, and  independent.  "  Some  of  our  Council,"  said  Evelyn,  "  were  for 
sending  them  a  menacing  letter,  which  those  who  better  understood  the 
peevish  and  touchy  humour  cf  that  colony  were  utterly  against." 


BRITISH  POLICY  TOWARDS  AMERICA  g 

with  the  contempt  which  it  deserved,  on  pain,  in  their 
case  likewise,  of  an  immediate  prorogation  or  dissolution. 
Such  a  message  could  bring  only  one  answer  from  men 
who  had  our  blood  in  their  veins,  and  in  whose  village 
schools  our  history  was  taught  as  their  own.  Junius, 
no  blind  partisan  of  the  Americans,  wrote  of  them  with 
force  and  truth.  "  They  have  been  driven  into  excesses 
little  short  of  rebellion.  Petitions  have  been  hindered 
from  reaching  the  Throne ;  and  the  continuance  of  one 
of  the  principal  Assemblies  rested  upon  an  arbitrary 
condition,  which,  considering  the  temper  they  were  in, 
it  was  impossible  they  should  comply  with."  At  Bos- 
ton, in  the  fullest  House  that  had  ever  met,  ninety-two 
members,  as  against  seventeen,  flatly  declined  to  with- 
draw the  letter.  The  Assemblies  of  the  other  colonies 
stood  stoutly  by  their  fugleman,  and  faced,  and  in  some 
cases  paid,  the  threatened  penalty. 

In  one  city  and  another,  from  New  York  to  Charles- 
ton, the  language  which  had  been  familiar  under  the 
Stamp  Act  again  was  heard.  The  Sons  of  Liberty  be- 
gan to  stir.  The  glorious  majority  was  celebrated  by 
processions  with  ninety-two  torches,  and  banquets  with 
an  almost  interminable  list  of  toasts.  Above  all,  a  com- 
bination against  the  use  of  British  manufactures  once  more 
was  openly  talked  of  ;  and  the  young  ladies  looked  out 
'their  spinning-wheels,  and  the  young  gentlemen  reflected 
ruefully  that  the  weather  was  already  warm  for  home- 
made linsey-wolsey.  Boston  itself,  all  things  considered, 
was  tranquil  almost  to  tameness,  until  an  unhappy  inci- 
dent ruffled  the  peaceful  waters.  The  captain  of  a  frig- 
ate, which  mounted  guard  over  the  town,  had  taken 
advantage  of  his  station  at  the  mouth  of  the  harbour  to 
intercept  and  impress  New  England  sailors  as  they  re- 
turned home  from  sea.  During  the  height  of  his  unpop- 
ularity a  boat's-crew  from  his  ship,  on  an  alleged  breach 
of  the  revenue  laws,  seized  a  sloop  which,  to  make  the 
matter  worse,  was  owned  by  a  prominent  patriot,  and 
was  called  "  The  Liberty."  A  disturbance  ensued,  far 
less  serious  than  the  magistrates  of  Sunderland  and 


10  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

Hartlepool,  and  every  North  of  England  port  which 
possessed  a  custom-house  and  was  visited  by  a  press- 
gang,  in  those  rough  times  were  accustomed  to  deal 
with  as  part  of  the  year's  work.  But  the  English  Min- 
isters were  sore  and  nervous.  The  mildest  whisper  of 
a  non-importation  agreement,  and  the  most  distant  echo 
of  a  revenue  riot,  so  long  as  they  came  from  beyond  the 
Western  waters,  awoke  reminiscences  which  were  too 
much  for  their  temper  and  their  equanimity.  The  King, 
especially,  had  Boston  on  the  brain.  To  this  day  there 
are  some  among  her  sons  who  can  forgive  his  memory 
for  anything  rather  than  for  the  singular  light  in  which 
he  persisted  in  regarding  their  classic  city.  The  capital 
of  Massachusetts,  in  the  eyes  of  its  Sovereign,  was 
nothing  better  than  a  centre  of  vulgar  sedition,  bristling 
with  Trees  of  Liberty  and  strewn  with  brickbats  and 
broken  glass  ;  where  his  enemies  went  about  clothed  in 
homespun,  and  his  friends  in  tar  and  feathers. 

Whatever  his  view  might  be,  George  the  Third  was 
now  well  able  to  impose  it  on  the  Ministry.  Chatham 
had  retired,  and  the  Duke  of  Grafton,  who  was  not 
master  of  his  colleagues,  held  the  office  of  First  Lord 
of  the  Treasury.  The  Bedfords  by  this  time  had  con- 
trived to  establish  themselves  solidly  in  the  Government, 
and  were  always  at  hand  to  feed  the  flame  of  the  King's 
displeasure.  They  eagerly  represented  to  him  that  his 
authority  had  been  trifled  with  long  enough,  and  prom- 
ised that  five  or  six  frigates  and  one  strong  brigade 
would  soon  bring  not  only  Massachusetts,  but  the  whole 
American  continent,  to  reason.  Lord  Shelburne,  to  his 
infinite  credit,  fought  the  battle  of  sense  and  humanity 
singlehanded  within  the  Cabinet,  and  stoutly  declared 
that  he  would  be  no  party  to  despatching  to  New  Eng- 
land a  cutter,  or  a  company,  in  addition  to  the  force  that 
was  there  already.  Franklin,  whom  Shelburne  admired 
and  believed  in,  had  reminded  the  House  of  Commons 
that  a  regiment  of  infantry  could  not  oblige  a  man  to 
take  stamps,  or  drink  tea,  if  he  chose  to  do  without ;  and 
had  expressed  it  as  his  opinion  that,  if  troops  were  sent 


THE   COLONIAL    GOVERNORS  \\ 

to  America,  they  would  not  find  a  rebellion,  although  they 
would  be  only  too  likely  to  make  one.1  But  Franklin's 
wit  had  too  much  wisdom  in  it  for  George  the  Third,  and 
for  such  of  his  counsellors  as  knew  what  advice  was  ex- 
pected of  them.  The  Bedfords  carried  the  day,  and 
Shelburne  resigned  office.  Early  in  October  1768,  eight 
ships  of  war  lay  in  Boston  harbour.  Their  loaded 
broadsides  commanded  a  line  of  wharves  a  great  deal 
more  peaceable  than  was  the  quay  of  North  Shields 
during  one  of  the  periodical  disputes  between  the  keel- 
men  and  the  coal-shippers.  Cannon  and  infantry  were 
landed,  and  the  men  were  marched  on  to  the  Common 
with  drums  beating  and  colours  flying,  and  sixteen 
rounds  of  ball-cartridge  in  their  pouches.  The  first 
contingent  consisted  of  two  battalions,  and  the  wing  of 
another ;  and  subsequent  reinforcements  increased  the 
garrison  until  Boston  contained  at  least  one  red-coat  for 
every  five  of  the  men,  women,  and  children  who  made 
up  the  total  of  her  seventeen  thousand  inhabitants. 

Thus  the  second  stage  was  reached  in  the  downward 
course.  How  serious  a  step  it  was,  how  absolutely  ir- 
retrievable except  on  the  condition  of  being  retracted 
forthwith,  is  now  a  commonplace  of  history.  But  its 
gravity  was  acknowledged  at  the  time  by  few  English- 
men ;  and  those  who  were  specially  responsible  for  the 
conduct  of  affairs  were  blind  amidst  the  one-eyed.  It 
is  not  too  much  to  say  that,  among  our  own  people  of 
every  degree,  the  governing  classes  understood  America 
the  least.  One  cause  of  ignorance  they  had  in  common 
with  others  of  their  countrymen.  We  understand  the 
Massachusetts  of  1768  better  than  it  was  understood  by 
most  Englishmen  who  wrote  that  date  at  the  head  of 
their  letters ;  for,  when  the  question  is  that  of  getting  to 

1  Examination  of  Dr.  Benjamin  Franklin  before  the  House  in  Committee.  • 
The  Parliamentary  History  of  England,  vol.  xiv.,  p.  147.     Burke  said  that, 
when  Franklin  appeared  before  Parliament  to  be  examined  on  the  condi- 
tion of  things  in  America,  it  was  like  a  parcel  of  schoolboys  interrogating 
the  master. 


12  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

know  what  the  world  outside  Europe  was  like  four  gen« 
erations  ago,  distance  of  time  is  less  of  an  obstacle  to  us, 
in  an  age  when  all  read,  than  was  distance  of  space  to 
our  ancestors  before  the  days  of  steam  and  telegraph. 
A  man  bound  for  New  York,  as  he  sent  his  luggage  on 
board  at  Bristol,  would  willingly  have  compounded  for 
a  voyage  lasting  as  many  weeks  as  it  now  lasts  days. 
When  Franklin,  still  a  youth,  went  to  London  to  buy 
the  press  and  types  by  which  he  hoped  to  found  his 
fortune,  he  had  to  wait  the  best  part  of  a  twelvemonth 
for  the  one  ship  which  then  made  an  annual  trip  between 
Philadelphia  and  the  Thames.  When,  in  1762,  already 
a  great  man,  he  sailed  for  England  in  a  convoy  of  mer- 
chantmen, he  spent  all  September  and  October  at  sea, 
enjoying  the  calm  weather,  as  he  always  enjoyed  every- 
thing ;  dining  about  on  this  vessel  and  the  other ;  and 
travelling  "  as  in  a  moving  village,  with  all  one's  neigh- 
bours about  one."  Adams,  during  the  height  of  the  war, 
hurrying  to  France  in  the  finest  frigate  which  Congress 
could  place  at  his  disposal,  — •  and  with  a  captain  who 
knew  that,  if  he  encountered  a  superior  force,  his  dis- 
tinguished guest  did  not  intend  to  be  carried  alive  under 
British  hatches,  —  could  make  no  better  speed  than  five 
and  forty  days  between  Boston  and  Bordeaux.  Lord 
Carlisle,  carrying  an  olive-branch  the  prompt  delivery 
of  which  seemed  a  matter  of  life  and  death  to  the  Min- 
istry that  sent  him  out,  was  six  weeks  between  port  and 
port,  tossed  by  gales  which  inflicted  on  his  brother 
Commissioners  agonies  such  as  he  forbore  to  make  a 
matter  of  joke  even  to  George  Selwyn.  General  Ried- 
esel,  conducting  the  Brunswick  auxiliaries  to  fight  in  a 
quarrel  which  was  none  of  theirs,  counted  three  mortal 
months  from  the  day  when  he  stepped  on  deck  at  Stade 
in  the  Elbe  to  the  day  when  he  stepped  off  it  at  Quebec 
in  the  St.  Lawrence.  If  such  was  the  lot  of  plenipoten- 
tiaries on  mission,  and  of  generals  in  command,  it  may 
be  imagined  how  humbler  individuals  fared,  the  duration 
of  whose  voyage  concerned  no  one  but  themselves. 
Waiting  weeks  on  the  wrong  side  of  the  water  for  a  full 


THE   COLONIAL    GOVERNORS  13 

complement  of  passengers,  and  weeks  more  for  a  fair 
wind ;  —  and  then  beating  across  in  a  badly  found  tub, 
with  a  cargo  of  millstones  and  old  iron  rolling  about 
below  ;  —  they  thought  themselves  lucky  if  they  came 
into  harbour  a  month  after  their  private  stores  had  run 
out,  and  carrying  a  budget  of  news  as  stale  as  the  ship's 
provisions.1 

Whatever  else  got  across  the  Atlantic  under  such  con- 
ditions, fresh  and  accurate  knowledge  of  what  people  on 
the  opposite  coast  thought,  and  how  they  lived,  most 
assuredly  did  not.  War  is  a  great  teacher  of  geography. 
The  ideas  about  men,  laws,  and  localities  in  the  United 
States,  which  were  current  here  until  Lee's  Virginian 
campaigns  and  Sherman's  March  to  Savannah,  the  Proc- 
lamation of  Freedom,  and  the  re-election  of  Lincoln, 
came  successively  to  enlighten  us,  were  vague  and  dis- 
torted even  in  an  era  of  ocean  steamers ;  but  those 
ideas  were  tame  and  true  as  compared  to  the  images 
which  floated  across  the  mental  vision  of  our  grand- 
father's grandfather  whenever  he  took  the  trouble  to 
think  about  the  colonies.  The  hallucinations  of  the 
British  mind,  practical  even  in  its  fantasies,  assumed 
the  shape  of  fabulous  statistics  which  went  to  show  that 
America,  unless  her  commercial  ambition  was  kept  tight 
in  hand,  would  overset  the  intentions  of  Providence  by 
ceasing  to  supply  her  wants  exclusively  from  Britain. 
"  The  great  defect  here,"  Franklin  wrote  from  London, 
"  is  in  all  sorts  of  people  a  want  of  attention  to  what 
passes  in  such  remote  countries  as  America ;  an  unwill- 
ingness to  read  anything  about  them  if  it  appears  a  little 
lengthy  ;  and  a  disposition  to  postpone  the  consideration 
even  of  the  things  they  know  they  must  at  last  consider, 
so  that  they  may  have  time  for  what  more  immediately 
concerns  them,  and  withal  enjoy  their  amusements,  and 
be  undisturbed  in  the  universal  dissipation."2  They 

1  Among  accounts  of  such  voyages,  none  are  more  life-like  than  those 
which  may  be  found  in  Davis's  Travels  in  America,  published    in   1803  ; 
an  exquisitely  absurd  book,  which  the  world,  to  the  diminution  of  its  gaiety, 
has  forgotten. 

2  Letter  to  Samuel  Cooper  ;   London,  July  7,  1773. 


14  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

read  as  little  as  they  could  help ;  and,  when  they  did 
read,  they  were  informed  by  the  debates  in  Parliament 
that  the  farmers  and  backwoodsmen  of  the  West,  if 
they  were  permitted  to  manufacture  in  iron,  in  cotton, 
and  in  wool,  and  to  export  the  produce  of  their  labour 
all  the  world  over,  would  speedily  kill  the  industries  of 
Leeds  and  Manchester  and  Sheffield.  And  they  learned 
from  the  newspapers,  for  whom  Niagara  and  the 
Rapids  did  not  exist,  that  the  interests  of  Newfoundland 
were  threatened  by  a  scheme  for  the  establishment  of 
a  cod  and  whale  fishery  in  Lake  Erie  and  Lake  On- 
tario. That  was  the  sort  of  stuff,  said  Franklin,  which 
was  produced  for  the  amusement  of  coffee-house  students 
in  politics,  and  was  the  material  for  "  all  future  Livys, 
Rapins,  Robertsons,  Humes,  and  Macaulays  who  may 
be  inclined  to  furnish  the  world  with  that  rara  avis,  a 
true  history."  l 

Over  and  above  the  misconceptions  prevailing  in 
other  quarters,  Ministers  of  State  were  under  a  disad- 
vantage peculiar  to  themselves.  While  other  English- 
men were  ignorant,  they  were  habitually  misinformed. 
In  recent  years  the  nation  has  more  than  once  learned 
by  bitter  experience  the  evils  which  arise  from  bad 
advice  sent  home  by  administrators  on  the  spot,  whether 
they  be  dull  people  who  cannot  interpret  what  is  pass- 
ing around  them,  or  clever  people  with  a  high-flying 
policy  of  their  own.  But  the  Colonial  Governors  and 
High  Commissioners  of  our  own  times  have  been  men 
of  good,  and  sometimes  of  lofty,  character;  whereas 
the  personages  upon  whose  reports  Lord  Hillsborough 
and  Lord  Dartmouth  had  to  depend  for  forming  their 
notions  of  the  American  population,  and  in  accordance 
with  whose  suggestions  the  course  taken  at  an  emer- 

1  Letter  of  May  1765  to  the  editor  of  a  newspaper,  under  the  sig- 
nature of  "  A  Traveller. "  Mrs.  Catharine  Macaulay,  author  of  The  His- 
tory of  England  from  the  Accession  of  James  the  First  to  that  of  the 
Brunswick  Line,  was  then  much  in  vogue  among  the  Whigs.  They  were 
rather  at  a  loss  for  an  historian  of  their  own,  to  set  against  the  Tacobitisra 
of  David  Hume. 


THE   COLONIAL    GOVERNORS  15 

gency  by  the  British  Cabinet  was  necessarily  shaped, 
were  in  many  cases  utterly  unworthy  of  their  trust. 
Among  them  were  needy  politicians,  and  broken-down 
stockjobbers,  who  in  better  days  had  done  a  good  turn 
to  a  Minister,  and  for  whom  a  post  had  to  be  found  at 
times  when  the  English  public  departments  were  too 
full,  or  England  itself  was  too  hot,  to  hold  them.  There 
remained  the  resource  of  shipping  them  across  the  Atlan- 
tic to  chaffer  for  an  increase  of  salary  with  the  Assembly 
of  their  colony,  and  to  pester  their  friends  at  home  with 
claims  for  a  pension  which  would  enable  them  to  revisit 
London  without  fear  of  the  Marshalsea.  They  took 
small  account  socially  of  the  plain  and  shrewd  people 
amongst  whom  their  temporary  lot  was  thrown ;  and 
they  were  the  last  to  understand  the  nature  and  motives 
of  that  moral  repugnance  with  which  their  supercilious- 
ness was  repaid. 

On  the  Secretary  of  State's  list  there  were  better  men 
than  these,  who  unfortunately  were  even  worse  gov- 
ernors. It  so  happened  that  in  critical  places,  and  at 
moments  which  were  turning-points  of  history,  the  high- 
est post  in  the  colony  was  more  often  than  not  occupied 
by  some  man  of  energy  and  industry,  who  in  personal 
conduct  was  respectable  according  to  the  standard  then 
ruling  in  the  most  easy  branch  of  a  public  service  no- 
where given  to  austerity.  But  they  were  not  of  an 
intellectual  capacity  equal  to  a  situation  which  would 
have  tried  the  qualities  of  a  Turgot.  They  moved  in  an 
atmosphere  such  that  perverted  public  spirit  was  more 
dangerous  than  no  public  spirit  at  all.  A  great  man 
would  have  sympathised  with  the  aspirations  of  the 
colonists ;  a  lazy  man  would  have  laughed  at  and  dis- 
regarded them ;  but,  (by  a  tendency  irresistible  in  times 
of  unrest  and  popular  discontent,)  a  narrow  and  plod- 
ding man  is  the  predestined  enemy  of  those  whom  it  is 
his  vocation  to  govern.  Exactly  in  proportion  as  peo- 
ple are  keen  to  detect  their  rights,  and  formidable  to 
insist  on  having  them,  a  governor  of  this  type  is  cer- 
tain to  distrust  their  aims,  to  disapprove  their  methods, 


j6  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

and  bitterly  to  dislike  their  turn  of  character.  In  his 
eyes,  the  rough  and  ready  incidents  that  accompany  the 
spread  of  political  excitement  in  a  young  community  are 
so  many  acts  of  treason  against  his  office,  which  he  is 
always  apt  to  magnify.  His  self-respect  is  wounded  ;  his 
sense  of  official  tradition  is  honestly  shocked  ;  and,  while 
the  people  are  intent  upon  what  they  regard  as  a  public 
controversy,  he  is  sure  to  treat  the  whole  matter  as  a 
personal  conflict  between  himself  and  them. 

Such  a  man,  in  such  a  state  of  mind  and  temper, 
makes  it  his  duty,  and  finds  it  his  consolation,  to  pour 
out  his  griefs  and  resentments  in  the  correspondence 
which  he  carries  on  with  his  official  superiors.  It  is  the 
bare  truth  that  his  own  Governors  and  Lieutenant-Gov- 
ernors  wrote  King  George  out  of  America.  The  stages 
of  the  process  are  minutely  recorded  by  an  analytic 
philosopher  who  enjoyed  every  facility  for  conducting 
his  observations.  "  Their  office,"  wrote  Franklin, 
"  makes  them  insolent ;  their  insolence  makes  them 
odious ;  and,  being  conscious  that  they  are  hated,  they 
become  malicious.  Their  malice  urges  them  to  contin- 
ual abuse  of  the  inhabitants  in  their  letters  to  Adminis- 
tration, representing  them  as  disaffected  and  rebellious, 
and,  (to  encourage  the  use  of  severity,)  as  weak,  divided, 
timid,  and  cowardly.  Government  believes  all ;  thinks 
it  necessary  to  support  and  countenance  its  officers. 
Their  quarrelling  with  the  people  is  deemed  a  mark 
and  consequence  of  their  fidelity.  They  are  therefore 
more  highly  rewarded,  and  this  makes  their  conduct 
still  more  insolent  and  provoking." 

It  was  a  picture  painted  from  life,  in  strong  but 
faithful  colours.  The  letters  of  Bernard,  the  Governor 
of  Massachusetts,  contained  the  germ  of  all  the  culpable 
and  foolish  proceedings  which,  at  the  long  last,  alienated 
America.  As  far  back  as  the  year  1764  he  wrote  a 
memorandum  in  which  he  urged  the  Cabinet  to  quash 
the  Charters  of  the  colonies.  Throughout  the  agitation 
against  the  Stamp-duty  he  studiously  exaggerated  the 
turbulence  of  the  popular  party,  and  underrated  their 


THE   COLONIAL    GOVERNORS  If 

courage  and  sincerity.  "  The  people  here,"  he  wrote 
in  January  1766,  "  talk  very  high  of  their  power  to  resist 
Great  Britain  ;  but  it  is  all  talk.  New  York  and  Boston 
would  both  be  defenceless  to  a  royal  fleet.  I  hope 
that  New  York  will  have  the  honour  of  being  sub- 
dued first."  When,  to  his  chagrin,  the  obnoxious  tax 
was  abolished,  Bernard  set  himself  persistently  to  the 
work  of  again  troubling  the  quieted  waters.  He  pro- 
posed, in  cold  blood,  during  the  interval  between  the 
repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act  and  the  imposition  of  the  Tea- 
duty,  that  Massachusetts  should  be  deprived  of  her  As- 
sembly. When  the  new  quarrel  arose,  he  lost  no  chance 
of  stimulating  the  fears  of  the  Court,  and  flattering  its 
prejudices.  He  sent  over  lists  of  Royalists  who  might 
be  nominated  to  sit  as  councillors  in  the  place  of  the 
ejected  representatives,  and  lists  of  Patriots  who  should 
be  deported  to  England,  and  there  tried  for  their  lives. 
He  called  on  the  Bedfords  for  troops  as  often  and  as 
importunately  as  ever  the  Bedfords  themselves  had 
called  for  trumps  when  a  great  stake  was  on  the  card- 
table.  He  advised  that  the  judges,  and  the  civil  ser- 
vants, of  Massachusetts  should  be  paid  by  the  Crown 
with  money  levied  from  the  colony.  He  pleaded  in 
secret  that  the  obnoxious  taxes  should  never,  and  on  no 
account,  be  repealed  or  mitigated ;  while  in  a  public 
despatch  he  recommended  that  a  petition  from  the  As- 
sembly, praying  for  relief  from  these  very  taxes,  should 
be  favourably  considered.  For  this  plot  against  the 
liberties  of  America  was  carried  on  out  of  the  view  of 
her  people.  Amidst  the  surprise  and  dismay  inspired 
by  each  successive  stroke  of  severity  with  which  they 
were  visited,  the  colonists  did  not  recognise,  and  in  some 
cases  did  not  even  suspect,  the  hand  of  their  own  paid 
servants,  who  were  for  ever  professing  to  mediate  be- 
tween them  and  their  angry  sovereign.  Since  Machia- 
velli  undertook  to  teach  the  Medici  how  principalities 
might  be  governed  and  maintained,  no  such  body  of  lit- 
erature was  put  on  paper  as  that  in  which  Sir  Francis 
Bernard,  (for  his  services  procured  him  a  baronetcy,) 


jg  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

instructed  George  the  Third  and  his  Ministers  in  the  art 
of  throwing  away  a  choice  portion  of  a  mighty  Empire. 

But  in  order  to  comprehend  a  policy  which  lay  so 
far  outside  the  known  and  ordinary  limits  of  human 
infatuation,  it  must  never  be  forgotten  that  there  was  a 
deeper  and  a  more  impassable  gulf  than  the  Atlantic 
between  the  colonists  and  their  rulers.  If  Cabinet 
Ministers  at  home  had  known  the  Americans  better, 
they  would  only  have  loved  them  less.  The  higher  up 
in  the  peerage  an  Englishman  stood,  and  the  nearer  to 
influence  and  power,  the  more  unlikely  it  was  that  he 
would  be  in  sympathy  with  his  brethren  across  the  seas, 
or  that  he  would  be  capable  of  respecting  their  suscepti- 
bilities, and  of  apprehending  their  virtues,  which  were 
less  to  his  taste  even  than  their  imperfections.  It  is 
unnecessary  to  recapitulate  any  portion  of  the  copious 
mass  of  evidence,  drawn  from  their  own  mouths,  and 
those  of  their  boon  companions  and  confederates,  by 
aid  of  which  a  description,  —  and  the  accuracy  of  it  no 
one  has  thought  fit  to  impugn,  —  has  been  given  of  the 
personal  habits  and  the  public  morality  prevalent  among 
those  statesmen  whom  the  majority  in  Parliament  sup- 
ported, and  in  whom  the  King  reposed  his  confidence.1 
How  they  drank  and  gamed  ;  what  scandalous  modes 
of  life  they  led  themselves,  and  joyously  condoned  in 
others ;  what  they  spent  and  owed,  and  whence  they 
drew  the  vast  sums  of  money  by  which  they  fed  their 
profusion,  may  be  found  in  a  hundred  histories  and 
memoirs,  dramas,  novels,  and  satires.  But  the  story  is 
nowhere  recorded  in  such  downright  language,  and  with 
so  over-brimming  an  abundance  of  detail,  as  in  the  easy 
mutual  confidences  of  the  principal  actors;  if,  indeed, 
that  can  be  called  a  confidence  which  the  person  con- 
cerned would  have  told  with  equal  freedom  and  self- 
complacency  to  any  man,  —  and,  it  must  be  confessed, 
to  many  women,  —  as  long  as  the  hearers  were  of  his 
own  rank,  and  belonged  to  his  own  party. 

1  Chapter  iii.  of  the  Early  History  of  Charles  James  Fox. 


BRITAIN  AND  HER    COLONIES  19 

These  folk  were  the  product  of  their  age,  which,  in 
its  worst  aspect,  resembled  nothing  that  England  has 
known  before  or  since.  The  stern  heroes  who  waged 
the  great  civic  contest  of  the  seventeenth  century,  and 
who  drew  their  strength  from  the  highest  of  all  sources, 
had  been  succeeded  by  a  race  who  in  private  very  gen- 
erally lived  for  enjoyment,  and  in  Parliament  fought  for 
their  own  hand.  The  fibre  of  our  public  men  had  long 
been  growing  dangerously  lax  ;  and  at  length  temptation 
came  in  irresistible  force.  The  sudden  wealth,  which 
poured  into  England  after  Chatham  had  secured  her 
predominance  in  both  hemispheres,  brought  in  its  train 
a  flood  of  extravagance  and  corruption,  and  occasioned 
grave  misgivings  to  those  who  were  proud  of  her  good 
name,  and  who  understood  her  real  interests.  There 
was  now,  however,  in  store  for  our  country  a  severe  and 
searching  lesson,  the  direct  consequence  of  her  faults, 
and  proportioned  to  their  magnitude,  but  by  which  as  a 
nation  she  was  capable  of  profiting.  She  escaped  the 
fate  of  other  world-wide  empires  by  the  noble  spirit  in 
which  she  accepted  the  teaching  of  disaster.  From  the 
later  years  of  the  American  war  onwards  there  set  in  a 
steady  and  genuine  reformation  in  personal  and  political 
morals  which  carried  her  safe,  strong,  and  pure  through 
the  supreme  ordeal  of  the  wrestle  with  Napoleon. 

But  nothing  is  more  certain  than  that  there  was  a 
period  when  Englishmen  who  had  studied  the  past,  and 
who  watched  the  present,  recognised  a  very  close  par- 
allel between  their  own  country  and  the  capital  of  the 
ancient  world  at  the  time  when  the  Provinces  lay  help- 
less and  defenceless  at  the  disposal  of  the  Imperial 
Government.  They  read  their  Gibbon  with  uneasy  pre- 
sentiments, and  were  not  disposed  to  quarrel  with  sat- 
irists who  found  in  London  and  Bath  much  the  same 
material  as  Rome  and  Baiae  had  afforded  to  Juvenal. 
Smollett,  though  by  preference  he  drew  from  ugly  models, 
depicted  things  as  he  saw  them,  and  not  as  he  imagined 
them.  Those  scenes  of  coarseness  and  debauchery,  of 
place-hunting  and  bribery,  of  mean  tyranny  and  vulgar 

C2 


20  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

favouritism,  which  make  his  town-stories  little  short  of 
nauseous,  and  give  to  his  sea-stories  their  unpleasing 
but  unquestionable  power,  were  only  the  seamy  side  of 
that  tapestry  on  which  more  fashionable  artists  recorded 
the  sparkling  follies  and  splendid  jobbery  of  their  era. 
Great  in  describing  the  symptoms,  Smollett  had  detected 
the  root  of  the  disease,  as  is  shown  in  his  description  of 
the  throng  of  visitors  who  came  to  drink  the  Bath  waters. 
"  All  these  absurdities,"  he  wrote,  "  arise  from  the  gen- 
eral tide  of  luxury,  which  hath  overpowered  the  nation, 
and  swept  away  all,  even  the  dregs  of  the  people.  Clerks 
and  factors  from  the  East  Indies,  loaded  with  the  spoils 
of  plundered  provinces ;  planters,  negro-drivers,  and 
hucksters  from  our  American  plantations,  enriched  they 
know  not  how ;  agents,  commissaries,  and  contractors, 
who  have  fattened  in  two  successive  wars  on  the  blood 
of  the  nation;  usurers,  brokers,  and  jobbers  of  every 
kind;  men  of  low  birth  and  no  breeding,  have  found  them- 
selves suddenly  translated  to  a  state  of  affluence  un- 
known to  former  ages."  l 

Other  writers,  who  were  not  professional  cynics,  and 
who  observed  mankind  with  no  inclination  to  make  the 
worst  of  what  they  saw,  were  all  in  the  same  story. 
Home  Tooke  pronounced  that  English  manners  had  not 
changed  by  degrees,  but  of  a  sudden  ;  and  he  attributed 
it  chiefly  to  our  connection  with  India  that  luxury  and 
corruption  had  flowed  in,  "  not  as  in  Greece,  like  a  gentle 
rivulet,  but  after  the  manner  of  a  torrent."2  On  such 
a  point  no  more  unimpeachable  witnesses  can  be  found 
than  those  American  Tories  who  sacrificed  their  homes, 
their  careers,  and  their  properties  for  love  of  England, 
and  for  the  duty  which  they  thought  that  they  owed  her. 
These  honest  men  were  shocked  and  pained  to  find  that 
in  passing  from  the  colonies  to  the  mother-country  they 
had  exchanged  an  atmosphere  of  hardihood,  simplicity, 
and  sobriety  for  what  seemed  to  them  a  perpetual  cy- 
clone of  prodigality  and  vice.  Their  earlier  letters, 

1  Humphrey  Clinker  ;  the  letter  from  Bath  of  April  23. 

2  Memoirs  of  John  Home  Tooke,  vol.  ii.,  p.  488. 


BRITAIN  AND  HER    COLONIES  21 

before  they  had  grown  accustomed  to  a  state  of  manners 
which  they  never  could  bring  themselves  to  approve, 
breathe  in  every  paragraph  disappointment  and  disillu- 
sion.1 The  blemishes  on  the  fair  fame  of  England, 
which  these  unhappy  children  of  her  adoption  discovered 
late  in  life,  were  familiar  to  her  native  sons  from  the 
time  when  they  first  began  to  take  account  of  what  was 
going  on  around  them.  Churchill's  denunciations  of 
the  rake,  the  gamester,  and  the  duellist  in  high  places 
of  trust  and  power  read  to  us  now  like  the  conventional 
invective  of  satire ;  but  in  his  own  generation  they  were 
true  to  the  life  and  the  letter.  And  Cowper,  whose 
most  halting  verse  had  a  dignity  and  sincerity  which 
must  ever  be  wanting  to  Churchill's  bouncing  couplets, 
made  it  a  complaint  against  his  country 

"  That  she  is  rigid  in  denouncing  death 
On  petty  robbers,  and  indulges  life 
And  liberty,  and  oft-times  honour  too, 
To  peculators  of  the  public  gold : 
That  thieves  at  home  must  hang,  but  he  that  puts 
Into  his  overgorged  and  bloated  purse 
The  wealth  of  Indian  provinces,  escapes."  2 

By  whatever  channels  money  flowed  into  the  country, 
it  was  in  the  nature  of  things  that  those  who  were  the 
strongest  should  get  the  most.  The  people  of  birth 
and  fashion,  who  as  a  class  were  always  in  power,  had 
no  mind  to  be  outbid  and  outshone  by  any  nabob,  or 
army  contractor,  or  West  Indian  planter  who  was  push- 

1  Samuel  Curwen,  for  instance,  who  left  Salem  in  Massachusetts  for  Lon- 
don in  May  1775,  writes  in  July  of  the  same  year  :  "The  dissipation,  self- 
forget  fulness,  and  vicious  indulgences  of  every  kind  which  characterise  this 
metropolis  are  not  to  be  wondered  at.     The  unbounded  riches  of  many 
afford  the  means  of  every  species  of  luxury,  which,  (thank  God,)  our  part 
of  America  is  ignorant  of."     And  again  in  the  following  August  :  "You 
will  not  wonder  at  the  luxury,  dissipation,  and  profligacy  of  manners  said 
to  reign  in  this  capital,  when  you  consider  that  the  temptations  to  indul- 
gence, from  the  lowest  haunts  to  the  most  elegant  and  expensive  rendez- 
vous of  the  noble  and  polished  world,  are  almost  beyond  the  power  of 
number  to  reckon  up." 

2  Book  I.  of  The  Task. 


22  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

ing  himself  to  the  front  in  Parliament  and  in  society.  In 
order  to  hold  their  own  against  the  new  men  in  wealth, 
and  in  all  that  wealth  brings,  they  had  one  resource, 
and  one  only.  The  opinion  of  their  set  forbade  them 
to  engage  in  trade ;  and,  apart  from  any  question  of 
sentiment,  their  self-indulgent  habits  unfitted  them  for 
the  demands  of  a  genuine  business  life,  which  were 
more  severe  then  than  now.  The  spurious  business 
which  a  gentleman  may  do  in  his  off  hours  with  no 
commercial  training,  no  capital,  and  no  risk  except  to 
honour,  was  unknown  in  those  primitive  days.  In  the 
eighteenth  century  the  City  did  not  care  to  beg  or  to 
buy  any  man's  name,  unless  he  gave  with  it  the  whole 
of  his  time  and  the  whole  of  his  credit.  But  a  great 
peer  had  small  cause  to  regret  that  the  gates  of  com- 
merce were  barred  to  him  and  his,  as  long  as  he  could 
help  himself  out  of  the  taxes,  and  help  himself  royally ; 
for,  in  that  paradise  of  privilege,  what  an  individual 
received  from  the  public  was  in  proportion  to  the  means 
which  he  possessed  already.  Horace  Walpole,  who 
lived  very  long  and  very  well  on  sinecures  which  were 
waiting  for  him  when  he  came  of  age,  said  that  there 
was  no  living  in  England  under  twenty  thousand  a  year. 
"  Not  that  that  suffices  ;  but  it  enables  one  to  ask  for  a 
pension  for  two  or  three  lives." 

A  nobleman  with  a  large  supply  of  influence  to  sell, 
who  watched  the  turn  of  the  market,  and  struck  in  at 
the  right  moment,  might  make  the  fortune  of  his  family 
in  the  course  of  a  single  week.  "  To-morrow,"  Rigby 
wrote  to  the  Duke  of  Bedford  in  September  1766, 
"  Lord  Hertford  kisses  hands  for  Master  of  the  Horse. 
Lord  Beauchamp  is  made  Constable  of  Dublin  Castle 
for  life  in  the  room  of  an  old  Mr.  Hatton.  Lord  Hert- 
ford gives  Mr.  Hatton  a  thousand  pounds  to  quit  his 
employment,  which  was  five  hundred  a  year.  A  thou- 
sand more  is  added,  and  Lord  Beauchamp  has  got  it 
for  his  life.  There  is  another  job  done  for  another  son 
in  a  Custom-house  place,  which  will  be  a  thousand  a 
year  more.  In  short,  what  with  sons  and  daughters, 


BRITAIN  AND  HER    COLONIES  2$ 

and  boroughs,  and  employments  of  all  kinds,  I  never 
heard  of  such  a  trading  voyage  as  his  Lordship's  has 
proved."  Rigby  himself,  —  whose  stock-in-trade  was  an 
effrontery  superior  to  the  terrors  of  debate,  a  head  of 
proof  in  a  drinking  bout,  and  an  undeniable  popularity 
with  all  circles  whose  good-will  was  no  compliment,  — 
was  Master  of  the  Rolls  in  Ireland,  or  rather  out  of  Ire- 
land, for  life.  In  addition,  he  enjoyed  for  the  space  of 
fourteen  years  the  vast  and  more  than  questionable 
emoluments  of  a  Paymaster  of  the  Forces  who  was 
without  a  conscience,  and  with  a  good  friend  at  the 
Treasury.  A  balance  of  eleven  hundred  thousand 
pounds  of  public  money  stood  in  his  name  at  the  bank, 
the  interest  on  which  went  to  him,  or  rather  to  his 
creditors  ;  for  he  lived  and  died  insolvent.  To  this  day 
the  nation  has  against  him  a  bad  debt  of  a  large 
amount, — in  the  sense,  that  is,  in  which  a  traveller 
whose  purse  has  been  taken  has  a  bad  debt  against  a 
highwayman. 

The  increasing  luxury,  and  the  rise  in  the  standard  of 
living,  which  drove  great  men  into  these  raids  on  the 
Exchequer,  at  the  same  time  provided  the  means  of 
gratifying,  if  not  of  satisfying,  their  rapacity.  New 
offices  were  created  out  of  the  superfluities  of  the 
revenue ;  and,  as  each  year  went  round,  those  which 
already  existed  became  better  worth  having.  The 
receipts  of  the  Customs  and  the  Excise  together  under 
Lord  North  were  double  what  they  had  been  under  Sir 
Robert  Walpole.  The  profits  of  patent  places,  received 
in  the  shape  of  fees  or  percentages,  mounted  steadily 
upwards  as  the  business  which  passed  through  the 
hands  of  the  holder,  or  of  his  humble  and  poorly  paid 
subordinates,  grew  in  importance  and  in  volume.  The 
Usher  of  the  Exchequer  saw  his  gains,  in  the  course  of 
one  generation,  grow  from  nine  hundred  to  eighteen 
hundred,  and  from  eighteen  hundred  to  four  thousand 
two  hundred  pounds  a  year.  The  spread  of  commerce, 
the  rush  of  enterprise,  brought  causes  into  the  Courts, 
and  private  Bills  on  to  the  table  of  Parliament,  in 


24  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

numbers  such  that  many  a  post,  which  twenty  years 
before  had  been  regarded  as  a  moderate  competence  for 
life,  now  enabled  its  occupier  to  entertain  the  ambition 
of  founding  a  family  out  of  the  tribute  which  he  levied 
from  litigants  and  promoters.1 

The  domestic  history  of  the  epoch  clearly  shows  that 
every  noble,  and  even  gentle,  household  in  the  kingdom 
claimed  as  the  birthright  of  its  members  that  they  should 
live  by  salary.  The  eldest  son  succeeded  to  the  estate ; 
the  most  valuable  part  of  which,  more  productive  than 
a  coal-mine  or  a  slate-quarry,  was  some  dirty  village 
which  returned  a  member  for  each  half-score  of  its 
twenty  cottages.  The  second  son  was  in  the  Guards. 
The  third  took  a  family  living,  and  looked  forward  to 
holding  at  least  a  Canonry  as  well.  The  fourth  entered 
the  Royal  Navy  ;  and  those  that  came  after,  (for  fathers 
of  all  ranks  did  their  duty  by  the  State,  whose  need  of 
men  was  then  at  the  greatest,)  joined  a  marching  regi- 
ment as  soon  as  they  were  strong  enough  to  carry  the 
colours.  And  as  soldiers  and  sailors,  whatever  might 
be  the  case  in  other  departments,  our  ancestors  gave 
full  value  for  their  wages.  From  the  day  when  Rodney 
broke  the  line  off  Dominica,  back  to  the  day  when  de 
Grammont  did  not  break  the  line  at  Dettingen,  a  com- 
mission in  the  British  army  or  navy  was  no  sinecure. 
Our  aristocracy  took  the  lion's  share ;  but  they  played 
the  lion's  part.  The  sons  and  grandsons  of  the  houses 
of  Manners  and  Keppel  did  not  do  their  work  in  the 
trenches  and  on  the  quarter-deck  by  proxy.  Killed  in 
Germany,  killed  in  America,  killed  in  the  Carnatic  with 
Lawrence,  killed  on  the  high  seas  in  an  action  of  frigates, 

1  The  case  was  well  put  by  Dr.  Watson,  afterwards  Bishop  of  Llandaff, 
in  a  letter  to  the  Duke  of  Manchester  in  the  year  1780.  Writing,  (for  so 
staunch  a  Whig,)  with  great  moderation,  Watson  said  :  "The  influence  of 
the  Crown,  —  which  has  acquired  its  present  strength  more,  perhaps,  from 
the  additional  increase  of  empire,  commerce,  and  national  wealth,  than 
from  any  criminal  desire  to  subvert  the  Constitution,  —  has  pervaded,  I 
fear,  the  whole  mass  of  the  people.  Every  man  of  consequence  almost  in 
the  kingdom  has  a  son,  relation,  friend,  or  dependant,  whom  he  wishes  to 
provide  for  ;  and,  unfortunately  for  the  liberty  of  this  country,  the  Crown 
has  the  means  of  gratifying  the  expectation  of  them  all." 


BRITAIN  AND  HER    COLONIES  2$ 

browned  in  a  transport,  died  of  wounds  on  his  way 
home  from  the  West  Indies,  —  such  entries,  coming 
thick  and  fast  over  a  period  of  forty  years,  during  which 
we  were  fighting  for  five  and  twenty,  make  the  baldest 
record  of  our  great  families  a  true  roll  of  honour. 

Whether  they  lived  on  their  country  or  died  for  her, 
the  members  of  our  ruling  class  were  an  aristocracy, 
State-paid,  as  far  as  they  earned  money  at  all ;  seldom 
entering  the  open  professions  ;  and  still  further  removed 
from  the  homely  and  laborious  occupations  on  which 
the  existence  of  society  is  founded.  But  they  governed 
the  Empire,  and,  among  other  parts  of  the  Empire, 
those  great  provinces  in  North  America  which  were 
inhabited  by  a  race  of  men  with  whom,  except  their 
blood  and  language,  they  had  little  in  common.  Burke, 
who  told  the  House  of  Commons  that  he  had  taken  t" o7 
some  years  a  good  deal  of  pains  to  inform  himself  on 
the  matter,  put  the  white  population  in  the  colonies  at 
not  less  than  two  millions,  which  was  something  between 
a  fourth  and  a  fifth  of  the  population  of  Great  Britain. 
The  outposts  of  that  army  of  pioneers  were  doing  battle 
with  the  wilderness  along  an  ever-advancing  frontier 
of  eighteen  hundred  miles  from  end  to  end.  In  the 
Southern  States,  where  life  was  cruelly  rough  for  the 
poorer  settlers,  and  where  the  more  wealthy  landowners 
depended  on  the  labour  of  negroes,  society  was  already 
constituted  after  a  fashion  which  differed  from  anything 
that  was  to  be  seen  in  New  England,  or  in  Old  England 
either.  But  the  great  majority  of  the  colonists  were 
gathered  together,  though  not  very  near  together,  in 
settled  districts,  with  a  civilisation  and  a  type  of  char, 
acter  of  their  own  such  as  the  world  had  never  before 
witnessed. 

The.  French  nobles,  who  brought  their  swords  and 
fortunes  to  the  assistance  of  the  Revolution  in  America, 
opened  their  eyes  on  the  morning  after  their  arrival 
upon  a  state  of  things  which  closely  resembled  the 
romantic  ideal  then  fashionable  in  Parisian  circles.  But 


26  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

for  a  certain  toughness  and  roughness,  of  undoubted 
English  origin,  which  the  young  fellows  began  to  notice 
more  when  they  had  learned  to  speak  English  better, 
the  community  in  which  they  found  themselves  seemed, 
in  their  lively  and  hopeful  eyes,  to  have  been  made  to 
order  out  of  the  imagination  of  Rousseau  or  of  Fenelon. 
They  were  equally  delighted  with  the  external  aspect, 
and  the  interior  meaning,  of  the  things  around  them. 
The  Comte  de  Segur,  in  all  his  long  and  chequered 
existence,  met  with  nothing  which  so  pleased  him  as 
what  he  espied  along  the  high  roads  of  Delaware,  New 
Jersey,  and  Pennsylvania.  "  Sometimes,"  he  wrote,  "  in 
the  midst  of  vast  forests,  with  majestic  trees  which  the 
axe  had  never  touched,  I  was  transported  in  idea  to  the 
remote  times  when  the  first  navigators  set  their  feet  on 
that  unknown  hemisphere.  Sometimes  I  was  admiring 
a  lovely  valley,  carefully  tilled,  with  the  meadows  full  of 
cattle ;  the  houses  clean,  elegant,  painted  in  bright  and 
varied  colours,  and  standing  in  little  gardens  behind 
pretty  fences.  And  then,  further  on,  after  other  masses 
of  woods,  I  came  to  populous  hamlets,  and  towns  where 
everything  betokened  the  perfection  of  civilisation,  — • 
schools,  churches,  universities.  Indigence  and  vulgarity 
nowhere  ;  abundance,  comfort,  and  urbanity  everywhere. 
The  inhabitants,  each  and  all,  exhibited  the  unassuming 
and  quiet  pride  of  men  who  have  no  master,  who  see 
nothing  above  them  except  the  law,  and  who  are  free 
from  the  vanity,  the  servility,  and  the  prejudices  of  our 
European  societies.  That  is  the  picture  which,  through- 
out my  whole  journey,  never  ceased  to  interest  and 
surprise  me." 

De  Segur  and  his  comrades  in  arms  were  young  and 
enthusiastic  when  they  first  visited  America ;  but  they 
recorded,  or  re-published,  their  impressions  of  it  after  an 
experience  of  men  and  cities  such  as  falls  to  the  lot  of 
few.  Lafayette,  whatever  might  be  the  misfortunes  of 
his  middle  life,  had  sooner  or  later  seen  a  great  deal 
of  the  world  under  the  pleasant  guise  which  it  presents 
to  the  hero  of  a  perpetual  ovation.  Mathieu  Dumas,  — 


BRITAIN  AND  HER    COLONIES  27 

who,  before  he  was  Lieutenant-General  of  the  armies  of 
King  Louis  the  Eighteenth,  served  Napoleon  long  and 
faithfully,  —  had  marched,  and  fought,  and  administered 
all  Europe  over  in  the  train  of  the  most  ubiquitous  of 
conquerors.  And  yet,  after  so  much  had  been  tried  and 
tasted,  the  remote  and  ever-receding  picture  of  their 
earliest  campaign  stood  out  as  their  favourite  page  in 
the  book  of  memory.  They  liked  the  country,  and  they 
never  ceased  to  love  the  people.  They  could  not  forget 
how,  in  "  one  of  those  towns  which  were  soon  to  be  cities, 
or  villages  which  already  were  little  towns,"  they  would 
alight  from  horseback,  in  a  street  bright  with  flowers 
and  foliage.  They  would  lift  the  knocker  of  shining 
brass,  and  behind  the  door,  gay  with  paint  which  never 
was  allowed  to  lose  its  gloss,  they  were  sure  to  meet 
with  a  hospitality  that  knew  no  respect  of  persons. 
"Simplicity  of  manners,"  said  Lafayette,  "the  desire  to 
oblige,  and  a  mild  and  quiet  equality  are  the  rule  every- 
where. The  inns  are  very  different  from  those  of  Europe. 
The  master  and  mistress  sit  down  with  you,  and  do  the 
honours  of  an  excellent  dinner ;  and,  when  you  depart, 
there  is  no  bargaining  over  the  bill.  If  you  are  not  in 
the  mind  to  go  to  a  tavern,  you  can  soon  find  a  country- 
house  where  it  is  enough  to  be  a  good  American  in  order 
to  be  entertained  as  in  Europe  we  entertain  a  friend." 

Mathieu  Dumas  detected  a  visible  difference  between 
English  and  American  manners.  "  In  spite,"  he  said, 
"of  the  resemblance  in  language,  in  costume,  in  customs, 
in  religion,  and  in  the  principles  of  government,  a  dis- 
tinct national  character  is  forming  itself.  The  colonists 
are  milder  and  more  tolerant,  more  hospitable,  and  in 
general  more  communicative  than  the  English.  The 
English,  in  their  turn,  reproach  them  with  levity  and  too 
keen  a  taste  for  pleasure."  But  the  contrast  was  not 
with  England  alone  among  European  nations ;  and  the 
cause  lay  deep  in  the  favourable  conditions  of  life 
which  prevailed  in  the  New  World,  and  were  wanting 
to  the  Old.  "An  observer,"  wrote  de  Segur,  "fresh 
from  our  magnificent  cities,  and  the  airs  of  our  young 


28  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

men  of  fashion,  —  who  has  compared  the  luxury  of  out 
upper  classes  with  the  coarse  dress  of  our  peasants,  and 
the  rags  of  our  innumerable  poor,  —  is  surprised,  on 
reaching  the  United  States,  by  the  entire  absence  of  the 
extremes  both  of  opulence  and  misery.  All  Americans 
whom  we  met  wore  clothes  of  good  material.  Their 
free,  frank,  and  familiar  address,  equally  removed  from 
uncouth  discourtesy  and  from  artificial  politeness,  be- 
tokened men  who  were  proud  of  their  own  rights  and 
respected  those  of  others." 

That  national  character,  which  the  young  French 
colonels  admired,  was  home-grown ;  but  it  bore  trans- 
portation well.  The  American  qualities  of  that  plain 
and  strong  generation  did  not  require  American  sur- 
roundings to  set  them  off  to  advantage.  John  Adams 
began  life  as  a  rural  schoolmaster,  and  continued  it  as 
a  rural  lawyer.  He  never  saw  anything  which  Lord 
Chesterfield  or  Madame  du  Deffand  would  have  recog- 
nised as  society  until  he  dined  with  Turgot  to  meet  a 
member  of  the  family  of  de  Rochefoucauld.  He  learned 
French  as  he  went  along,  and  at  the  bottom  of  his  heart 
had  no  great  love  or  respect  for  Frenchmen.  But,  soon 
after  he  began  his  sojourn  in  France,  he  became  at  home 
in  the  diplomatic  world  ;  and  before  long  he  had  acquired 
there  a  commanding  influence,  which  proved  to  be  of 
inestimable  value  to  his  country.  Franklin  in  London 
had  no  official  position  above  that  of  agent  for  a  co- 
lonial Assembly,  and  no  previous  knowledge  of  Eng- 
lish society  except  what  he  had  picked  up  as  a  youth, 
working  for  a  printer,  and  lodging  in  Little  Britain  at 
three  and  sixpence  a  week.  And  yet  he  was  welcomed 
by  all,  of  every  rank,  whom  he  cared  to  meet ;  and  by 
some  great  people  with  whose  attentions,  and  with  a 
good  deal  of  whose  wine,  he  would  have  willingly  dis- 
pensed.1 When  he  took  up  his  abode  in  Paris,  he  con- 

1  "  We  have  lost  Lord  Clare  from  the  Board  of  Trade,"  Franklin  wrote 
in  July  1768.  "He  took  me  home  from  Court  the  Sunday  before  his 
removal,  that  I  might  dine  with  him,  as  he  said,  alone,  and  talk  over 
American  affairs.  He  gave  me  a  great  deal  of  flummery ;  saying  that 


BRITAIN  AND  HER   COLONIES  2Q 

tinued  to  live  as  he  had  lived  in  Philadelphia  till  the  age 
of  seventy,  —  talking  his  usual  talk,  and  dressed  in  sober 
broadcloth.  But  even  so  he  became  the  rage,  and  set 
the  fashion,  in  circles  which  gave  undisputed  law  to  the 
whole  of  polite  Europe  in  matters  where  taste  and  be- 
haviour were  concerned. 

The  fact  is  that  intelligent  travellers  from  the  coun- 
tries of  continental  Europe  found  in  America  exactly 
what  they  had  been  searching  after  eagerly,  and  with 
some  sense  of  disappointment,  in  England.  Anglo- 
mania was  then  at  its  height  in  Parisian  society ;  and 
the  noblest  form  of  that  passion  led  men  to  look  for, 
and  imitate,  the  mode  of  life  which  must  surely,  (so 
they  hoped  and  argued,)  be  the  product  of  such  laws 
and  such  freedom  as  ours.  Of  simplicity  and  frugality, 
of  manliness  and  independence,  of  religious  conviction 
and  sense  of  duty,  there  was  abundance  in  our  island, 
if  they  had  known  where  to  seek  it.  In  every  commer- 
cial town  from  Aberdeen  to  Falmouth,  and  on  many  a 
countryside,  the  day's  work  was  being  done  by  men  of 
the  right  stamp,  with  something  of  old  manners,  but  of 
solid  modern  knowledge  ;  close  attendants  at  church,  or, 
in  more  cases  still,  at  chapel ;  writing  without  effort  and 
pretension  a  singularly  clear  and  vigorous  English,  and 
making  the  money  which  they  spent,  and  a  good  deal 
more,  by  their  own  labour  and  their  own  enterprise. 
From  them  came  Howard  and  Raikes,  Arkwright  and 
Wedgwood,  Watt  and  Brindley.  For  them  Wesley  and 
John  Newton  preached,  and  Adam  Smith  and  Arthur 
Young  wrote.  Intent  on  their  business,  they  yet  had 
time  to  spare  for  schemes  of  benevolence  and  general 
utility ;  and  they  watched  the  conduct  of  State  affairs 
with  deep  and  growing  interest,  and  with  indignation 
which  was  mostly  silent.  For  their  opportunity  was 

though  at  my  Examination  I  answered  some  of  his  questions  a  little  pertly, 
yet  he  liked  me  for  the  spirit  I  showed  in  defence  of  my  country.  At  part- 
ing, after  we  had  drunk  a  bottle  and  a  half  of  claret  each,  he  hugged  and 
kissed  me,  protesting  that  he  had  never  in  his  life  met  with  a  man  he  was 
EO  much  in  love  with." 


30  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

not  yet ;  and  they  were  creating  and  maturing  quietly, 
and  as  it  were  unconsciously,  that  public  opinion  of  their 
class  which  grew  in  strength  during  the  coming  fifty 
years,  and  then  for  another  fifty  years  was  destined  to 
rule  the  country.  They  were  the  salt  of  the  earth  in 
those  days  of  corruption ;  but  they  were  not  the  people 
whom  a  gentleman  from  Versailles,  visiting  London  with 
letters  of  introduction  from  the  Due  de  Choiseul  or  the 
Chevalier  de  Boufflers,  would  be  very  likely  to  meet. 
They  lived  apart  from  high  society,  and  did  not  copy  its 
habits  or  try  to  catch  its  tone;  nor  did  they  profess  the 
theory  of  an  equality  which,  as  their  strong  sense  told 
them,  they  could  not  successfully  assert  in  practice. 
Preserving  their  self-respect,  and  keeping  within  their 
own  borders,  they  recognised  that  the  best  of  the  world, 
whether  they  liked  it  or  not,  was  made  for  others.  How- 
ever little  they  might  care  to  put  the  confession  into 
words,  they  acted,  and  wrote,  and  spoke  as  men  aware 
that  the  government  of  their  nation  was  in  the  hands  of 
an  aristocracy  to  which  they  themselves  did  not  belong. 
It  was  far  otherwise  in  America.  The  people  in  the 
settled  districts  had  emerged  from  a  condition  of  cruel 
hardship  to  comfort,  security,  and  as  much  leisure  as 
their  temperament,  already  the  same  as  now,  would  per- 
mit them  to  take.  Their  predecessors  had  fought  and 
won  their  battle  against  hunger  and  cold  and  pestilence, 
against  savage  beasts  and  savage  men.  As  time  went 
on,  they  had  confronted  and  baffled  a  subtler  and  more 
deadly  adversary  in  the  power  of  the  later  Stuarts  ;  for, 
as  soon  as  the  exiles  had  conquered  from  the  wilderness 
a  country  which  was  worth  possessing,  the  statesmen  of 
the  Restoration  unsuccessfully  tried  to  destroy  their  lib- 
erties, to  appropriate  their  substance,  and  to  impose  on 
them  the  form  of  Church  government  to  escape  which 
they  had  crossed  the  ocean.  Those  varied  and  pro- 
tracted struggles  had  left  a  mark  in  the  virile  and  reso- 
lute temper  of  the  existing  generation,  in  their  readiness 
to  turn  a  hand  to  any  sort  of  work  on  however  sudden 
an  emergency,  and  in  their  plain  and  unpretentious 


BRITAIN  AND  HER   COLONIES  31 

habits.  But  there  was  nothing  uncivilised  or  unlettered 
about  them.  In  their  most  bitter  straits,  while  the  exist- 
ence of  the  community  was  still  at  hazard,  the  founders 
of  the  colony  had  taken  measures  for  securing  those 
supreme  benefits  to  the  individual  which  in  their  eyes 
were  the  true  end  and  object  of  all  combined  human 
effort.  By  the  time  they  had  reaped  their  fifth  harvest 
on  the  shores  of  the  Massachusetts  Bay,  they  had  estab- 
lished a  public  school  at  Cambridge  ;  and  the  next  year 
it  was  raised  to  the  dignity  of  a  college,  with  a  library 
and  something  of  an  endowment.  Again  a  twelve- 
month, and  the  first  sheet  was  drawn  from  beneath  a 
New  England  printing-press  ;  and  eight  years  later  on, 
in  1647,  it  was  ordered  that  every  township,  "  after  the 
Lord  hath  increased  them  to  the  number  of  fifty  house- 
holders, shall  appoint  one  within  their  towns  to  teach 
all  such  children  as  shall  resort  to  him  to  write  and 
read  ;  and,  where  any  town  shall  increase  to  the  number 
of  one  hundred  families,  they  shall  set  up  a  grammar 
school,  the  masters  thereof  being  able  to  instruct  youth 
so  far  as  they  may  be  fitted  for  the  university." 

Not  otherwise  did  the  Scottish  statesmen  of  1696 
read  their  duty,  with  great  results  to  the  future  of  their 
people,  ancient  and  immovable  as  were  the  limits  by 
which  that  future  was  circumscribed  and  confined.  But 
the  lawgivers  of  the  Puritan  colonies  had  a  blank  parch- 
ment before  them ;  arid  they  were  equal  to  the  task  of 
ruling  the  lines  along  which  the  national  character  was 
to  run.  The  full  fruit  of  their  work  was  seen  four  gen- 
erations afterwards  in  the  noble  equality  of  universal 
industry,  and  of  mutual  respect,  which  prevailed  among 
a  population  of  whom  none  were  idle  and  none  were 
ignorant.  "  There,"  wrote  de  Se"gur,  "  no  useful  pro- 
fession is  the  subject  of  ridicule  or  contempt.  Idleness 
alone  is  a  disgrace.  Military  rank  and  public  employ- 
ment do  not  prevent  a  person  from  having  a  calling  of 
his  own.  Every  one  there  is  a  tradesman,  a  farmer,  or 
an  artisan.  Those  who  are  less  well  off,  —  the  servants, 
labourers,  and  sailors,  —  unlike  men  of  the  lower  classes 


32  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

in  Europe,  are  treated  with  a  consideration  which  they 
merit  by  the  propriety  of  their  conduct  and  their  be- 
haviour. At  first  I  was  surprised,  on  entering  a  tavern, 
to  find  it  kept  by  a  captain,  a  major,  or  a  colonel,  who 
was  equally  ready  to  talk,  and  to  talk  well,  about  his 
campaigns,  his  farming  operations,  or  the  market  he 
had  got  for  his  produce  or  his  wares.  And  I  was  still 
more  taken  aback  when,  —  after  I  had  answered  the 
questions  put  to  me  about  my  family,  and  had  informed 
the  company  that  my  father  was  a  General  and  a  Min- 
ister of  State,  —  they  went  on  to  inquire  what  was  his 
profession  or  his  business." 

There  could  be  no  personal  sympathy,  and  no  identity 
of  public  views,  between  the  governors  in  Downing 
Street  and  the  governed  in  Pennsylvania  and  New 
England.  On  the  one  hand  was  a  commonwealth  con- 
taining no  class  to  which  a  man  was  bound  to  look  up, 
and  none  on  which  he  was  tempted  to  look  down ; 
where  there  was  no  source  of  dignity  except  labour,  and 
no  luxury  but  a  plenty  which  was  shared  by  all.  On 
the  other  hand  was  a  ruling  caste,  each  member  of 
which,  unless  by  some  rare  good  fortune,  was  taught 
by  precept  and  example,  from  his  schooldays  onwards, 
that  the  greatest  good  was  to  live  for  show  and  pleas- 
ure ;  that  the  whole  duty  of  senatorial  man  was  to  draw 
as  much  salary  as  could  be  got,  in  return  for  as  little 
work  as  might  be  given  for  it;  and  that,  socially  and 
politically,  the  many  were  not  to  be  reckoned  as  stand- 
ing on  a  level  with  the  few. 

The  great  English  public  schools,  to  which  the  aris- 
tocracy then  resorted,  were  described  by  Cowper  in  a 
poem  of  striking  power,  which  is  far  too  earnest,  and  too 
scrupulously  truthful,  to  be  classed  as  a  satire.1  At 
Eton,  especially,  the  stern  and  often  cruel  education  of 
the  seventeenth  century  was  obsolete,  and  had  been 
succeeded  by  a  laxity  of  manners  which  was  due,  in  large 
measure,  to  the  ill-considered  action  of  Lord  Holland. 

1  Cowper's  Tirocinium,  or  a  Review  of  Schools,  was  published  in  1784. 
He  had  been  educated  at  Westminster,  and  he  left  school  in  1749. 


BRITAIN  AND  HER   COLONIES  33 

Charles  Fox  had  been  withdrawn  from  his  studies  to  ac- 
company his  father  on  a  long  Continental  tour,  in  the 
course  of  which  he  was  plunged  prematurely  into  the 
temptations  of  the  great  and  idle  world.  He  went  back 
to  Eton  with  unlimited  money,  and  the  taste  and  habit 
of  dissipation.  Nature  had  endowed  the  boy  with  qual- 
ities which  dazzled  and  bewitched  his  comrades,  and 
excused  him  in  the  eyes  of  his  superiors ;  and  his  influ- 
ence in  the  school  was  unbounded.  Lord  Shelburne 
gave  it  as  his  opinion  that  the  great  change  for  the 
worse,  which  had  taken  place  among  the  youth  of  the 
upper  classes,  dated  from  the  time  that  the  Foxes  were 
predominant  at  Eton.  It  was  the  exaggerated  state- 
ment of  one  who  was  no  friend  to  the  family ;  for  it 
left  out  of  sight  the  consideration  that,  bad  as  Lord 
Holland's  conduct  was,  others  than  he  were  responsible 
for  the  morality  of  the  school.  Charles  Fox  would  have 
followed  a  better  path  if  it  had  been  pointed  out  by 
instructors  whom  he  loved  and  reverenced  ;  and,  at  .the 
very  worst,  a  few  private  interviews  with  a  strong-willed 
and  stout-armed  headmaster  should  have  convinced  the 
most  precocious  scapegrace  that  Eton  was  not  Spa  or 
Paris.  But  discipline,  in  any  true  sense  of  the  word, 
in  the  middle  of  that  century  did  not  exist  at  Eton.1 
Clever  boys  there  wrote  Latin,  as  it  was  written  no- 
where else.  That,  to  the  end  of  his  days,  was  the  per- 
suasion of  Charles  Fox ;  and  his  own  productions  go  to 
prove  it ;  for  his  schoolboy  exercises  were  often  marked 
by  a  rare  facility  of  handling,  and  a  lively  and  most 
fascinating  sense  of  personal  enjoyment  on  the  part  of 
the  writer.  Nor  did  Latin  verse  comprise  all  that  was 
to  be  learned  at  Eton.  The  authorities  gave  careful 
lessons  in  the  art  of  elocution  to  lads  many  of  whom 
inherited,  as  part  of  their  patrimony,  the  right  of  sitting 
for  a  borough,  or  the  obligation  of  standing  for  a  county. 
But  there  the  duty  of  a  teacher  towards  his  pupils,  as 

1  Some  extracts  relating  to  the  Eton  of  those  days,  taken  from  the 
Twelfth  Report  of  the  Historical  Manuscripts  Commission,  are  given  in 
the  First  Appendix  to  this  volume. 

VOL.  I.  D 


34 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 


he  himself  read  it,  ended.  The  boys  feared  the  masters 
less  than  the  masters  feared  the  boys,  and  with  good 
cause ;  for  the  doctrine  of  non-resistance  was  not  popu- 
lar among  these  Whigs  of  sixteen,  and  an  Eton  rebellion 
was  a  very  serious  matter  indeed.1 

»  The  senators  of  the  future,  when  they  left  school  for 
college,  found  themselves  in  a  place  where  boundless 
indulgence  was  shown  towards  the  frailties  of  the  power- 
ful and  the  high  born.  The  Duke  of  Grafton,  in  1768, 
was  in  the  very  depths  of  a  scandal  of  which  Junius  took 
care  that  all  the  world  should  be  cognisant ;  and  in  the 
course  of  that  very  year  his  Grace  was  unanimously 
chosen  by  the  Cambridge  senate  as  Chancellor  of  the 
University.  The  Earl  of  Sandwich  ran  a  dead  heat  for 
the  High  Stewardship  of  the  same  educational  body ; 
and  Cambridge  owed  its  salvation  from  the  ineffaceable 
disgrace  which  would  have  attended  his  success  to  the 
votes  of  the  country  clergy,  among  whom  his  opponent 
Lord  Hardvvicke,  a  nobleman  of  blameless  character, 
most  fortunately  had,  as  we  are  told,  "  much  connec- 
tion." 2  Gibbon,  in  three  out  of  his  six  autobiographies, 
has  related  how  the  fourteen  months  which  he  spent  at 
Oxford  were  totally  lost  for  every  purpose  of  study  and 
improvement,  at  a  college  where  "  the  dull  and  deep  po- 
tations of  the  fellows  excused  the  brisk  intemperance  of 
youth,  and  the  velvet  cap  of  a  Gentleman  Commoner 
was  the  cap  of  liberty  " ;  and  his  account  of  Magdalen 
is  illustrated  by  the  experience  of  Lord  Malmesbury, 
who  states  in  less  finished  phrases  that  the  life  among 
his  own  set  at  Merton  was  a  close  imitation  of  high  life 
in  London.  After  having  undergone  such  a  prelimi- 
nary training  at  the  famous  centres  of  national  education, 

1  A  picturesque  account  of  a  school  riot,  which  occurred  there  just  after 
the  close  of  the  American  war,  is  given  in  the  Fourteenth  Report,  Appen- 
dix, Part  I,  of  the  Historical  Manuscripts  Commission. 

2  Sandwich  likewise,  in  the  course  of  time,  established  a  connection  with 
the  clergy  of  a  sort  peculiar  to  himself.     The   Rev.  Mr.  Hackman,  who 
wanted  to  marry  one  of  his  mistresses'was  hanged  for  murdering  her;    and 
the  Rev.  Dr.  Dodd,  who  was  hanged  for  forgery,  according  to  Walpole 
had  married  another. 


BRITAIN  AND  HER   COLONIES  35 

a  young  man  of  fortune  was  started  on  the  grand  tour, 
to  be  initiated  in  the  free-masonry  of  luxury  and  levity 
which  then  embraced  the  whole  fashionable  society  of 
Europe.  If  he  was  his  own  master  he  travelled  alone, 
or  with  a  band  of  congenial  companions.  If  his  father 
was  alive,  he  made  his  voyage  under  the  ostensible  su- 
perintendence of  a  tutor,  whom  he  had  either  subjugated 
or  quarrelled  with  by  the  time  the  pair  had  traversed 
one  or  two  foreign  capitals.  A  youth  so  spent  was  a 
bad  apprenticeship  for  the  vocation  of  governing  with 
insight  and  sympathy  remote  colonies  inhabited  by  a 
hardy,  an  industrious,  and  a  religious  people. 


152 


CHAPTER   II 


JOHN   ADAMS.       BENJAMIN    FRANKLIN.       GEORGE    WASHING- 
TON.      COLONIAL    LOYALTY    AND    PROSPERITY 

THAT  the  pictures  drawn  in  these  pages  are  not  over- 
coloured  will  be  admitted  by  those  who  compare  the 
correspondence  of  George  the  Third  and  Lord  North 
with  Washington's  confidential  letters,  or  the  Last  Jour- 
nals of  Horace  Walpole  with  the  diary  of  John  Adams  ; 
—  by  those  who  contrast  the  old  age  of  Lord  Holland 
and  of  Franklin,  or  turn  from  the  boyhood  and  youth 
of  Charles  Fox  and  Lord  Carlisle  to  the  strait  and  stern 
upbringing  of  the  future  liberators,  creators,  and  rulers 
of  America.  Any  reader,  who  belongs  to  the  English 
race,  may  well  take  pride  in  the  account  which  the 
founders  of  the  great  Republic  have  given  of  them- 
selves in  documents  not  written  for  publication,  and 
marked  by  a  sincerity  which  attracts  sympathy,  and 
commands  belief.  There  he  may  see  the  records  of 
their  birth,  their  nurture,  and  their  early  wrestling  with 
the  world.  There  he  may  admire  the  avidity  with  which, 
while  they  worked  for  their  daily  bread,  they  were 
snatching  on  every  side  at  scraps  of  a  higher  education, 
and  piecing  them  together  into  a  culture  admirably  suited 
for  the  high  affairs  of  administration,  and  diplomacy,  and 
war  to  which  their  destiny  was  of  a  sudden,  and  unex- 
pectedly, to  call  them.  But  though  they  had  larger 
minds  and  stronger  wills  than  the  common,  their  lot  was 
the  same  as  that  of  the  majority  among  their  country- 
men in  the  Northern  colonies ;  and  their  story,  as  far  as 
their  circumstances  and  chances  in  life  were  concerned, 
is  the  story  of  all. 

The  father  of  John  Adams  was  a  labouring  farmer, 
who  wrought  hard  "to  live,  and  who  did  much  public 

36 


JOHN  ADAMS  37 

work  for  nothing.  His  eminent  son  put  on  record  that 
"  he  was  an  officer  of  militia,  afterwards  a  deacon  of  the 
church,  and  a  Selectman  of  the  town  ;  almost  all  the 
business  of  the  town  being  managed  by  him  in  that 
department  for  twenty  years  together ;  a  man  of  strict 
piety,  and  great  integrity  ;  much  esteemed  and  beloved, 
wherever  he  was  known,  which  was  not  far,  his  sphere 
of  life  not  being  extensive."  He  left  behind  him  prop- 
erty valued  at  thirteen  hundred  pounds,  and  he  had 
made  it  a  prime  object  to  give  the  most  promising  of 
his  children  that  college  education  which  he  himself  had 
missed.  In  those  last  particulars,  and  in  much  else,  he 
was  just  such  another  as  the  father  of  Thomas  Carlyle; 
but  there  was  this  difference,  that  the  elder  John  Adams, 
with  his  hard  hands  and  his  few  score  pounds  a  year, 
lived  in  a  society  where  a  man  knew  his  own  worth,  and 
claimed  and  took  the  place  which  was  due  to  him.1  Pro- 
genitor of  a  long  line  of  Presidents  and  Ambassadors, 
the  old  Selectman  of  Braintree  town  held  his  head  as 
erect  in  every  presence  as  did  any  of  his  descendants. 
His  son,  a  generation  further  removed  from  the  depress- 
ing influences  of  the  old  world,  and  driven  by  the  irre- 
sistible instinct  of  a  strong  man  born  on  the  eve  of 
stirring  times,  prepared  himself  diligently  for  a  high 
career  with  a  noble  indifference  to  the  million  and  one 
chances  that  were  against  his  attaining  it.  While  teach- 
ing in  a  grammar  school,  for  the  wages  of  a  day  labourer, 
he  bound  himself  to  an  attorney,  and  studied  hard  in  his 
remnants  of  leisure.  For  a  while  his  prospects  seemed 
to  him  doleful  enough.  "I  long,"  he  wrote,  "to  be  a 
master  of  Greek  and  Latin.  I  long  to  prosecute  the 

1 "  Even  for  the  mere  clothes-screens  of  rank  my  father  testified  no 
contempt.  Their  inward  claim  to  regard  was  a  thing  which  concerned 
them,  not  him.  I  love  to  figure  him  addressing  those  men  with  bared 
head  by  the  title  of 'Your  Honour,'  with  a  manner  respectful  but  unem- 
barrassed ;  a  certain  manful  dignity  looking  through  his  own  fine  face, 
with  his  noble  grey  head  bent  patiently  to  the  alas!  unworthy."  — 
Reminiscences  of  James  Carlyle,  p.  16.  The  beautiful  passage,  (towards 
the  end  of  the  little  biography,)  which  begins  "  he  was  born  and  brought 
up  the  poorest"  might,  even  to  the  figure  of  old  Mr.  Carlyle's  fortune, 
have  been  written  word  for  word  about  the  father  of  John  Adams. 


38  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

mathematical  and  philosophical  sciences.  I  long  tc 
know  a  little  of  ethics  and  moral  philosophy.  But  I 
have  no  books,  no  time,  no  friends.  I  must  therefore 
be  contented  to  live  and  die  an  ignorant  obscure  fellow." 
A  man  who  rails  in  that  strain  against  his  own  defi- 
ciencies is  seldom  long  in  mending  them.  John_Adams 
read  greedily,  whenever  he  could  lay  his  hancTon  those 
literary  works  which  possessed  sufficient  weight  and 
momentum  to  have  carried  them  across  the  seas  and 
into  Massachusetts,  —  Bacon  and  Bolingbroke,  Bentley 
and 'Tillotson  and  Butler;  as  well  as  Sydenham  and 
Boe'rhaave,  and  a  whole  course  of  medical  and  surgical 
authorities  which  were  lent  him  by  a  physician  in  whose 
house  he  was  lodging.  After  two  years  of  this  training 
he  became  a  lawyer,  settled  himself  at  Braintree,  and 
the  very  next  morning  fell  to  work  upon  his  Justinian. 
In  1759,  while  still  three  and  twenty,  he  rewrote  for  his 
own  guidance  the  fable  of  the  choice  of  Hercules,  with 
girls,  guns,  cards,  and  violins  on  the  one  side,  and  Mon- 
tesquieu and  Lord  Hale's  "History  of  the  Common 
Law"  on  the  other.  A  list  of  the  books  which  he  had 
mastered,  and  which  he  planned  to  master,  proves  that 
his  thoughts  travelled  far  above  the  petty  litigation  of 
county  and  township.  The  field  of  study  most  congenial 
to  him  lay  amidst  those  great  treatises  on  natural  law 
and  civil  law  which  were  the  proper  nourishment  for 
men  who  had  the  constitution  of  an  empire  latent  in 
their  brains.  According  to  his  own  estimate  he  was  a 
visionary  and  a  trifler,  —  too  proud  to  court  the  leaders 
of  the  local  Bar,  and  too  fine  to  gossip  himself  into  the 
good  graces  of  local  clients.  But  his  comrades,  who 
knew  him  as  the  young  know  the  young,  had  to  seek 
beyond  eighteen  hundred  years  of  time,  and  twice  as 
many  miles  of  space,  for  an  historical  character  with 
whom  to  compare  him.  Jonathan  Sewall,  the  close  ally 
and  generous  rival  of  his  early  days,  —  who  in  later 
years  justified  his  Christian  name  by  an  affection  and 
fidelity  proof  against  the  strain  of  a  difference  of  opinion 
concerning  that  Revolution  which  ruined  the  one  friend, 


JOHN  ADAMS 


39 


and  raised  the  other  to  the  first  place  in  the  State,  — 
consoled  John  Adams  in  his  obscurity  by  a  parallel  with 
no  less  a  jurist  than  Cicero.  "Who  knows,"  Sewall 
wrote,  "  but  in  future  ages,  when  New  England  shall 
have  risen  to  its  intended  grandeur,  it  shall  be  as  care- 
fully recorded  that  Adams  flourished  in  the  second 
century  after  the  exodus  of  its  first  settlers  from  Great 
Britain,  as  it  now  is  that  Cicero  was  born  in  the  six 
hundred  and  forty-seventh  year  after  the  building  of 
Rome  ? " l 

Such  are  the  day-dreams  of  five  and  twenty ;  and 
seldom  have  they  resulted  in  as  notable  a  fulfilment. 
John  Adams  was  the  first  who  reached  his  goal  of  those 
young  Americans  whose  aspirations,  trivial  only  to  the 
ignoble,  have  afforded  to  a  great  master  the  theme  for 
some  of  his  most  musical  sentences.  "The  youth,  in- 
toxicated with  his  admiration  of  a  hero,  fails  to  see  that 
it  is  only  a  projection  of  his  own  soul  which  he  admires.  ' 
In  solitude,  in  a  remote  village,  the  ardent  youth  loiters 
and  mourns.  With  inflamed  eye,  in  this  sleeping  wil-  < 
derness,  he  has  read  the  story  of  the  Emperor  Charles 
the  Fifth,  until  his  fancy  has  brought  home  to  the  sur- 
rounding woods  the  faint  roar  of  cannonades  in  the 
Milanese,  and  marches  in  Germany.  He  is  curious 
concerning  that  man's  day.  What  filled  it?  The 
crowded  orders,  the  stern  decisions,  the  foreign  de- 
spatches, the  Castilian  etiquette.  The  soul  answers : 
'  Behold  his  day  here  !  In  the  sighing  of  these  woods, 
in  the  quiet  of  these  grey  fields,  in  the  cool  breeze 
that  sings  out  of  these  northern  mountains ;  in  the 
hopes  of  the  morning,  the  ennui  of  noon,  and  saunter- 
ing of  the  afternoon ;  in  the  disquieting  comparisons ; 
in  the  regrets  at  want  of  vigour ;  in  the  great  idea,  and 
the  puny  execution;  —  behold  Charles  the  Fifth's  day; 
another  yet  the  same ;  behold  Chatham's,  Hampden's, 
Bayard's,  Alfred's,  Scipio's,  Pericles's  day  —  day  of  all 
that  are  born  of  women.'  "  2 

1  Sewall  to  Adams  ;  I3th  Feb.,  1760. 

2  Emerson's  oration  at  Dartmouth  College  ;  July,  1838. 


40  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

The  young  man's  outward  environment  was  in  strange 
contrast  to  the  ideas  on  which  his  fancy  fed.  For  many 
|  years  to  come  his  life  was  like  a  sonnet  by  Wordsworth 
done  into  dry  and  rugged  prose.  Slowly,  with  immense 
exertions  of  mind  and  body,  he  built  up  a  leading  prac- 
tice in  the  scattered  and  remote  court-houses  of  the 
rural  districts.  He  pursued  his  livelihood  through  a 
continuous  course  of  rudest  travel.  Side  by  side  with 
passages  of  keen  political  disquisition,  and  high-minded 
personal  introspection,  his  journal  tells  the  plain  honour- 
able narrative  of  his  humble  adventures  ;  —  how  he  was 
soaked  in  the  rain,  and  pinched  by  cold,  and  sent  miles 
out  of  his  way  by  a  swollen  ford,  and  lost  for  hours 
amidst  the  interminable  forests ;  where  he  slept,  or  tried 
to  sleep,  after  a  hard  day's  journey,  and  with  what  tire- 
some company  he  had  to  share  his  bedroom ;  where  he 
"oated,"  and  where  the  best  he  could  do  for  his  little 
mare  was  to  set  her  loose,  up  to  her  shoulders  in  grass, 
in  a  roadside  meadow ;  and  how  he  reached  a  friend's 
house  at  a  quarter  after  twelve  in  the  day,  just  as  they 
had  got  their  Indian  pudding,  and  their  pork  and  greens, 
upon  the  table.  Occupied  as  he  was  in  maintaining  his 
family,  Adams  never  shrank  from  his  turn  of  public 
duty.  He  was  surveyor  of  the  highways  of  Braintree, 
and  a  very  good  surveyor ;  and,  rising  in  due  course 
through  the  official  hierarchy,  he  became  assessor  and 
overseer  of  the  poor,  and  Selectman,  as  his  father  before 
him.  In  1768  he  removed  to  Boston,  which  then  was 
just  of  a  size  with  the  Boston  in  Lincolnshire  of  the 
present  day.  To  his  younger  eyes  it  had  seemed  a 
mighty  capital,  full  of  distractions  and  temptations ; 
and  the  time  never  came  when  he  felt  at  home  in  a 
town,  or  indeed  anywhere  except  among  the  sea-breezes 
and  the  pine-forests  of  "still,  calm,  happy  Braintree." 
"Who  can  study,"  he  wrote,  "in  Boston  streets?  I 
cannot  raise  my  mind  above  this  crowd  of  men,  women, 
beasts,  and  carriages,  to  think  steadily.  My  attention 
is  solicited  every  moment  by  some  new  object  of  sight, 
or  some  new  sound.  A  coach,  cart,  a  lady,  or  a  priest 


JOHN  ADAMS  4! 

may  at  any  time  disconcert  a  whole  page  of  excellent 
thoughts."  But  his  position  as  a  lawyer,  and  the  grave 
aspect  of  national  affairs,  —  on  which  his  opinions,  rarely 
and  modestly  expressed,  were  universally  known,  and 
carried  unusual  weight,  —  made  it  his  duty  to  establish 
himself  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the  superior  courts,  and 
in  the  political  centre  of  the  colony  which  was  soon  to 
become,  for  years  together,  the  political  battle-ground  of 
the  Empire. 

Jonathan  Sewall,  who  already  was  Attorney-General  • 
of  Massachusetts,  was  commissioned  by  the  Governor 
to  offer  Adams  the  post  of  Advocate-General  in  the 
Court  of  Admiralty.  It  was,  as  he  records,  a  well-paid 
employment,  a  sure  introduction  to  the  most  profitable 
business  in  the  province,  and  a  first  step  on  the  ladder 
of  favour  and  promotion.  But  Charles  Townshend's 
new  custom  duties  were  by  this  time  in  operation ;  and 
Adams,  in  firm  but  respectful  terms,  replied  that  in 
the  unsettled  state  of  the  country  he  could  not  place 
himself  under  an  obligation  of  gratitude  to  the  Govern- 
ment. Four  years  afterwards  he  computed  his  worldly 
wealth,  and  found  that,  after  paying  two  hundred  and 
fifty  pounds  towards  the  purchase  of  his  house  in  town, 
and  after  acquiring  twenty  acres  of  salt-marsh  in  the 
country,  he  was  worth  three  hundred  pounds  in  money. 
He  was  seven  and  thirty.  It  was  the  age  at  which 
Thurlow  and  Wedderburn  reached  the  rank  of  Solicitor- 
General  ;  and  at  which  Charles  Yorke  thought  himself 
ill-used  because  he  had  been  nothing  higher  than  Attor- 
ney-General. "This,"  Adams  wrote,  "is  all  that  my 
most  intense  application  to  study  and  business  has  been 
able  to  accomplish;  an  application  that  has  more  than 
once  been  very  near  costing  me  my  life,  and  that  has 
so  greatly  impaired  my  health.  Thirty-seven  years, 
more  than  half  the  life  of  man,  are  run  out.  The  re- 
mainder of  my  days  I  shall  rather  decline  in  sense, 
spirit,  and  activity.  My  season  for  acquiring  knowledge 
is  past,  and  yet  I  have  my  own  and  my  children's  for- 
tunes to  make."  That  was  the  reward  whioh  hitherto 


42  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

had  fallen  to  the  share  of  one  who  became  the  ruler  of 
the  United  States  long  before  George  the  Third  had 
ceased  to  rule  the  United  Kingdom,  and  who  survived 
until  his  own  son  asked  for  his  blessing  on  the  day 
when  he,  in  his  turn,  was  chosen  to  fill  the  same  exalted 
office. 


lap 
the 


There  was  another  celebrated  colonist  whose  youth 
had  been  fostered  at  a  greater  distance  still  from  the 
lap  of  luxury.  The  inventory  of  the  effects  owned  by 
great-great-grandfather  of  John  Adams  showed 
that  there  had  been  a  silver  spoon  in  the  family  four 
generations  back.  But  Franklin  ate  his  breakfast  with 
pewter  out  of  earthenware  until,  when  he  was  already 
a  mature  householder,  his  wife  bought  him  a  china 
bowl  and  a  silver  spoon,  on  the  ground  that  her  hus- 
band deserved  to  live  as  handsomely  as  any  of  his 
neighbours.1  If  he  inherited  no  plate,  he  derived  a 
more  valuable  legacy  from  his  ancestors,  who  in  their 
history  and  their  qualities  were  worthy  forerunners  of 
the  most  typical  American  that  ever  lived.  England 
in  the  seventeenth  century  gave,  or  rather  thrust  upon, 
the  New  World  much  of  what  was  staunch  and  true, 
and  much  also  of  what  was  quick-witted  and  enterpris- 
ing, in  her  population.  The  Franklins,  a  Northampton- 
shire clan  of  very  small  freeholders,  among  whom  the 
trade  of  blacksmith  was  as  hereditary  as  in  an  Indian 
caste,  were  good  Protestants  in  the  worst  of  times. 
During  the  reign  of  Queen  Mary  the  head  of  the  house- 
hold kept  his  English  Bible  fastened  with  tapes  beneath 
the  seat  of  a  stool,  and  read  it  aloud  with  the  stool  re- 
versed between  his  knees,  while  a  child  stood  in  the 
doorway  to  give  the  alarm  in  case,  an  apparitor  from 
the  Spiritual  Court  was  seen  in  the  street.  Benjamin 
Franklin's  father  was  a  stout  and  zealous  noncon- 

J"I  am,"  Franklin  wrote,  "the  youngest  Son,  of  the  youngest  Son,  of 
the  youngest  Son,  of  the  youngest  Son  for  five  generations  ;  whereby  I  find 
that,  had  there  originally  been  any  Estate  in  the  Family,  none  could  have 
stood  a  worse  chance  of  it." 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN  43 

formist ;  and,  when  conventicles  were  forbidden  in 
England  by  laws  cruelly  conceived  and  rigorously 
enforced,  he  carried  his  wife  and  children  to  Massa- 
chusetts in  order  that  they  might  enjoy  the  exercise  of 
their  religion  in  freedom.  He  set  up  at  Boston  first  as 
a  dyer,  and  then  as  a  maker  of  soap  and  candles.  The 
family  character  was  marked  by  native  ingenuity  and 
homely  public  spirit.  One  of  Franklin's  uncles  invented 
a  shorthand  of  his  own.  Another,  who  remained  at 
home  in  Northamptonshire,  taught  himself  law ;  filled 
local  offices  of  importance ;  was  prime  mover  in  all  use- 
ful undertakings  in  town  and  county ;  and  was  long 
remembered  in  his  village  as  a  benefactor,  an  adviser, 
and  (by  the  more  ignorant)  as  a  reputed  conjurer.  He 
set  on  foot  a  subscription  to  provide  a  set  of  chimes, 
which  his  nephew  heard  with  satisfaction  three-quarters 
of  a  century  afterwards ;  and  he  discovered  a  simple, 
effective  method  of  saving  the  common  lands  from 
being  drowned  by  the  river.  "  If  Franklin  says  he 
knows  how  to  do  it,  it  will  be  done,"  was  a  phrase 
which  had  passed  into  a  proverb  for  the  neighbourhood. 
He  died  four  years  to  a  day  before  his  brother's  famous 
child  was  born.  "Had  he  died  four  years  later,"  it  was 
said,  "  one  might  have  supposed  a  transmigration." 

Benjamin  Franklin  had  a  right  to  be  proud  of  the 
mental  gifts  which  were  born  within  him,  when  he 
looked  back  from  the  height  of  his  fame  to  the  material 
circumstances  which  surrounded  him  on  his  entrance 
into  this  world.  Seldom  did  any  man  who  started  with 
as  little  accomplish  so  much,  if  we  except  certain  of  the 
august  self-seekers  in  history  whose  career  was  carved 
out  at  a  great  cost  of  human  life  and  human  freedom. 
He  had  a  year  at  a  grammar-school,  and  a  year  at  a 
commercial  school ;  and  then  he  was  taken  into  the 
family  business,  and  set  to  serve  at  the  counter  and  run 
on  errands.  He  disliked  the  life ;  and  his  father,  who 
feared  that  he  would  break  loose  and  go  to  sea,  gravely 
took  him  a  round  of  the  shops  in  Boston,  and  showed 
him  joiners,  bricklayers,  turners,  braziers,  and  cutlers  at 


44  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

their  work,  in  order  that,  with  knowledge  of  what  he 
was  about,  he  might  choose  his  calling  for  himself. 
The  boy,  who  was  twelve  years  old,  everywhere  learned 
something  which  he  never  forgot,  and  which  he  turned 
to  account  in  one  or  another  of  the  seventy  years  that 
were  before  him.  The  combined  good  sense  of  parent 
and  child  led  them  to  decide  on  the  trade  of  a  printer. 
He  was  bound  apprentice,  and  from  this  time  forward 
he  read  the  books  which  passed  under  his  hand.  Others, 
which  he  loved  better,  he  purchased  to  keep ;  dining,  a 
joyful  anchorite,  on  a  biscuit  or  a  handful  of  raisins,  in 
order  that  he  might  spend  his  savings  on  his  infant 
library.  He  gave  himself  a  classical  education  out  of 
an  odd  volume  of  the  "Spectator,"  rewriting  the  papers 
from  memory,  and  correcting  them  by  the  original ;  or 
turning  the  tales  into  verse,  and  back  again  into  prose. 
He  taught  himself  arithmetic  thoroughly,  and  learned  a 
little  geometry  and  a  little  navigation ;  both  of  which 
in  after  days  he  made  to  go  a  long  way,  and  put  to  great 
uses. 

But,  above  all,  he  trained  himself  as  a  logician; 
making  trial  of  many  successive  systems  with  amazing 
zest,  until  he  founded  an  unpretentious  school  of  his 
own  in  which  his  pre-eminence  has  never  been  ques- 
tioned. He  traversed  with  rapidity  all  the  stages  in 
the  art  of  reasoning,  from  the  earliest  phase,  when  a 
man  only  succeeds  in  being  disagreeable  to  his  fellows, 
up  to  the  period  when  he  has  become  a  proficient  in  the 
science  of  persuading  them.  He  began  by  arguing  to 
confute,  "souring  and  spoiling  the  conversation,"  and 
making  enemies,  instead  of  disciples,  at  every  turn.  "  I 
had  caught  this,"  he  wrote,  "by  reading  my  father's 
books  of  dispute  on  religion.  Persons  of  good  sense,  I 
have  since  observed,  seldom  fall  into  it,  except  lawyers, 
university  men,  and  generally  men  of  all  sorts  who 
have  been  bred  at  Edinburgh."  He  next  lighted  upon 
a  translation  of  Xenophon's  "  Memorabilia,"  and,  capti- 
vated by  the  charms  of  the  Socratic  dialogue,  he  dropped 
the  weapons  of  abrupt  contradiction  and  positive  as- 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN  45 

sertion,  and  put  on  the  humble  inquirer.  He  grew 
very  expert  in  drawing  people  into  concessions,  the 
consequences  of  which  they  did  not  foresee,  —  espe- 
cially people  who  were  not  familiar  with  Shaftesbury's 
"  Characteristics "  and  Collins's  "  Discourse  on  Free 
Thinking."  From  his  own  study  of  those  works  he  had 
derived  conclusions  which  made  it  safer  for  him  to 
proselytise  the  Boston  of  that  day  by  a  process  of  sug- 
gestion and  induction  rather  than  by  dogmatic  exposi- 
tion. At  length  he  found  that  his  friends  grew  wary, 
and  would  hardly  reply  to  the  most  common  question 
without  asking  first  what  he  intended  to  infer  from  the 
answer.  Then  he  once  more  changed  his  style  of  con- 
versation ;  and  this  time  for  good.  Keeping  nothing  of 
his  former  method  except  the  habit  of  expressing  him- 
self "with  modest  diffidence,"  he  refrained  altogether 
from  the  words  "certainly,"  and  "undoubtedly,"  and 
from  the  air  of  aggressive  superiority  which  generally 
accompanies  them.  The  phrases  with  which  he  urged 
his  point,  and  seldom  failed  to  carry  it,  were  "  I  con- 
ceive," or  "  I  apprehend,"  or  "  It  appears  to  me,"  or 
"  It  is  so,  if  I  am  not  mistaken."  He  made  it  a  practice, 
likewise,  to  encourage  his  interlocutors  to  think  that 
the  opinion  which  he  aimed  at  instilling  into  them  was 
theirs  already.  If,  as  he  pleased  himself  with  believing, 
he  had  learned  these  arts  from  Socrates,  the  teaching 
of  the  Academy  had  for  once  borne  an  abundant  crop 
of  Baconian  fruit ;  for  it  would  be  hard  to  name  a  man 
who,  over  so  long  a  space  of  time  as  Franklin,  ever 
talked  so  many  people  into  doing  that  which  was  for 
their  own  improvement  and  advantage. 

The  theatre  of  his  beneficent  operations  was  not  his 
native  city.  Boston,  in  common  with  the  world  at  large, 
gathered  in  due  time  some  of  the  crumbs  which  fell 
from  the  table  of  his  inventiveness ;  but  she  very  soon 
lost  the  first  claim  upon  one  who  was  as  clever  a  son 
as  even  she  ever  produced.  At  the  age  of  seventeen 
Franklin  walked  into  the  capital  of  Pennsylvania,  his 
pockets  stuffed  with  shirts  and  stockings,  but  empty  of 


46  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

money ;  carrying  a  roll  under  each  arm,  and  eating 
as  he  went  along.  The  expansive  possibilities  of  an 
American's  career  may  be  traced  in  every  page  of  his 
early  story.  The  intimate  companions  of  his  poverty, 
young  as  he,  made  their  way  in  the  world  soon  and  far. 
One,  who  went  to  England,  got  himself  into  a  couplet 
of  the  "  Dunciad " ;  wrote  a  History  of  William  the 
Third  which  was  praised  by  Charles  Fox ;  and  extracted 
from  the  Earl  of  Bute  a  pension  twice  as  large  as  Dr. 
Johnson's.  Another  became  an  eminent  lawyer,  and 
died  rich  while  he  and  Franklin  were  still  below  middle 
age.  The  two  friends  had  agreed  that  the  one  who  left 
the  earth  first  should  afterwards  pay  a  visit  to  the  other ; 
but  the  ghost  had  yet  to  be  found  which  had  the  cour- 
age to  present  itself  to  Franklin. 

He  worked  hard,  and  lived  very  hardly  indeed  in 
Philadelphia,  and  in  London  for  a  while,  and  in  Phila- 
delphia again.  At  the  end  of  ten  years  he  was  securely 
settled  in  business  as  a  stationer  and  master-printer,  and 
the  owner  of  a  newspaper  which  soon  became  an  ex- 
cellent property,  and  which  bore  the  trace  of  his  hand 
in  every  corner  of  its  columns.1  By  a  miracle  of  indus- 
try and  thrift,  he  had  paid  out  his  first  partners,  and 
paid  off  his  borrowed  capital.  It  was  no  longer  neces- 
sary for  him  to  breakfast  on  gruel,  and  sup  on  half  an 
anchovy  and  a  slice  of  bread ;  to  be  at  work  when  his 
neighbours  returned  at  night  from  the  club, 'and  at  work 
again  before  they  rose  in  the  morning;  to  wheel  the 
paper  for  his  Gazette  home  through  the  streets  on  a 
barrow,  and  to  take  neither  rest  nor  recreation  except 
when  a  book  "  debauched  "  him  from  his  labours.  From 
the  moment  that  he  had  set  his  foot  firmly  on  the  path 


1  The  following  advertisement  appears  in  the  Pennsylvanian  Gazette, 
for  June  23rd,  1737:  "Taken  out  of  a  pew  in  the  church,  some  months 
since,  a  Common  Prayer  Book,  bound  in  red,  gilt,  and  lettered  D.  F.  on 
each  cover.  The  person  who  took  it  is  desired  to  open  it  and  read  the 
eighth  Commandment,  and  afterwards  return  it  into  the  same  pew  again  ; 
upon  which  no  further  notice  will  be  taken."  D.  F.  stands  for  Deborah 
Franklin. 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN  47 

of  fortune,  he  threw  his  vast  energy,  his  audacious  crea- 
tiveness,  his  dexterity  in  the  management  of  his  fellow- 
creatures,  and  a  good  portion  of  his  increased  though 
still  slender  substance,  into  the  service  of  his  adopted 
city.  One  scheme  followed  hard  upon  another;  each 
of  them  exactly  suited  to  local  wants  which  Franklin 
was  quick  to  discern,  and  to  a  national  taste  with  which 
he  was  entirely  in  sympathy.  By  the  end  of  a  quarter 
of  a  century  Philadelphia  lacked  nothing  that  was  pos- 
sessed by  any  city  in  England,  except  a  close  corpo- 
ration and  a  bull-ring,  and  enjoyed  in  addition  a  com- 
plete outfit  of  institutions  which  were  eagerly  imitated 
throughout  the  Northern  colonies. 

Franklin's  first  project  was  a  book-club ;  the  mother, 
to  use  his  own  words,  of  those  subscription  libraries 
which  perceptibly  raised  the  standard  of  American  con- 
versation, "  and  made  tradesmen  and  farmers  as  intelli- 
gent as  tbe  gentry  of  other  countries."  Then  came, 
in  rapid  succession,  a  volunteer  fire  company  ;  a  paid 
police-force ;  a  public  hospital ;  a  Philosophical  Society  ; 
an  Academy,  which  he  lived  to  see  develop  itself  into 
the  University  of  Pennsylvania ;  and  a  paper  currency 
which,  with  his  stern  views  on  private  and  public  credit, 
he,  fortunately  for  him,  did  not  live  to  see  at  the  height 
of  its  notoriety  in  the  shape  of  the  memorable  Pennsyl- 
vanian  Bonds.  He  turned  his  attention  successfully  to 
the  paving  and  scavenging  of  the  highways.  When 
the  city  was  first  lighted,  he  designed  the  form  of  street- 
lamp  which  has  long  been  in  universal  use  wherever 
Anglo-Saxons  now  burn  gas,  or  once  burned  oil.  He 
invented  a  hot-stove  for  sitting-rooms,  and  refused  a 
patent  for  it,  on  the  ground  that  he  himself  had  profited 
so  much  by  the  discoveries  of  others  that  he  was  only 
too  glad  of  an  opportunity  to  repay  his  debt,  and  to 
repay  it  in  a  shape  so  peculiarly  acceptable  to  his 
country-women.  Whitefield,  whom  everybody  except 
the  clergy  wished  to  hear,  had  been  refused  the  use 
of  the  existing  pulpits.  Franklin,  as  his  contribution  to 
the  cause  of  religion,  promoted  the  building  of  a  spacious 


48  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

meetinghouse,  vested  in  trustees,  expressly  for  the  use 
of  any  preacher  of  any  denomination  who  might  desire 
to  say  something  to  the  people  of  Philadelphia. 

In  1/44,  on  the  breaking  out  of  war  with  France, 
Franklin  excited  the  patriotism  of  Pennsylvania  by 
voice  and  pen,  and  directed  it  into  the  practical  channel 
of  enrolling  a  State  militia,  and  constructing  a  battery 
for  the  protection  of  the  river.  He  raised  the  requisite 
funds  by  a  lottery  in  which  he  was  artful  enough  to 
induce  the  members  of  the  Society  of  Friends  to  take 
tickets,  knowing  well  that,  without  their  support,  no 
scheme  appealing  to  the  purse  would  be  very  produc- 
tive in  Philadelphia.  In  order  to  arm  his  embrasures, 
he  applied  to  Governor  Clinton  of  New  York  for  can- 
non, who  met  him  with  a  flat  refusal.  But  Franklin 
sate  with  him  over  his  Madeira  until,  as  the  bumpers 
went  round,  his  Excellency  consented  to  give  six  guns, 
then  rose  to  ten,  and  ended  by  contributing  to  the  de- 
fence of  the  Delaware  no  less  than  eighteen  fine  pieces, 
with  carriages  included.  Eleven  years  afterwards,  when 
Braddock  marched  to  the  attack  of  Fort  Duquesne, 
Franklin,  by  the  earnest  request  of  the  general,  and  at 
formidable  risk  to  his  own  private  fortune,  organised 
the  transport  and  commissariat  with  an  ability  and  a 
foresight  in  marked  contrast  to  the  military  conduct  of 
the  ill-fated  expedition.  In  the  terrible  panic  which 
ensued  when  the  news  of  the  disaster  reached  Phila- 
delphia, the  authorities  of  the  colony,  —  catching  at  the 
hope  that,  as  he  understood  everything  else,  there  was 
at  least  a  chance  of  his  understanding  how  to  fight,  — 
entrusted  him  with  the  defence  of  the  North-West 
frontier  against  the  imminent  peril  of  an  Indian  inva- 
sion. He  levied  and  commanded  a  respectable  force, 
and  threw  up  a  line  of  forts,  the  planning  and  building 
of  which  gave  him  the  most  exquisite  satisfaction  ;  and, 
on  his  return  home,  he  accepted  the  highest  title  of  a 
true  American  by  becoming  a  Colonel  of  Militia,  and 
was  greeted  by  his  regiment  with  a  salvo  of  artillery 
which  broke  several  glasses  of  the  electrical  apparatus 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN  49 

that  had  already  made  his  name  famous  throughout  the 
entire  scientific  world. 

There  were  few  military  posts  with  regard  to  which 
Franklin,  if  he  was  not  competent  to  fill  them  himself, 
could  not  give  a  useful  hint  to  their  holder.  The  chaplain 
of  his  troops  complained  that  the  men  would  not  attend 
public  worship.  The  commanding  officer  accordingly 
suggested  that  the  chaplain  should  himself  serve  out 
the  rum  when  prayers  were  over ;  "  and  never,"  said 
Franklin,  "  were  prayers  more  generally  and  punctually 
attended.  I  think  this  method  preferable  to  the  punish- 
ment inflicted  by  some  military  laws  for  non-attendance 
on  divine  service."  Wherever  he  went,  and  whatever 
he  was  engaged  upon,  he  was  always  calculating,  and 
never  guessing.  When  he  built  his  forts,  he  soon 
noticed  that  two  men  cut  down  a  pine  of  fourteen  inches 
in  diameter  in  six  minutes,  and  that  each  pine  made 
three  palisades  eighteen  feet  in  length.  When  he  was 
collecting  money  for  his  Battery,  he  satisfied  himself,  by 
means  of  an  intricate  computation,  that,  out  of  every 
twenty-two  Quakers,  only  one  sincerely  disapproved  of 
participation  in  a  war  of  defence.  Andj  on  an  evening 
when  Whitefield  was  delivering  a  sermon  from  the  top  of 
the  Court-House  steps,  Franklin  moved  about  in  the  crowd, 
and  measured  distances,  until  he  had  ascertained  that  the 
human  voice,  or  at  any  rate  Whitefield's  voice,  could  be 
heard  by  more  than  thirty  thousand  people.  "  This,"  he 
said,  "  reconciled  me  to  the  newspaper  accounts  of  his 
having  preached  to  twenty-five  thousand  people  in  the 
fields,  and  to  the  history  of  generals  haranguing  whole 
armies,  of  which  I  had  sometimes  doubted." 

His  growing  reputation  brought  him  important  public 
employment,  though  not  any  great  amount  of  direct 
public  remuneration.  He  was  chosen  Clerk  of  the 
Pennsylvanian  Assembly  in  1736;  and  next  year  he  was 
placed  at  the  head  of  the  Pennsylvanian  Post  Office. 
As  time  went  on,  the  British  Government,  finding  that 
the  postal  revenue  of  the  colonies  had  fallen  to  less  than 
nothing,  appointed  Franklin  Joint  Postmaster-General  of 

VOL.  I.  E 


JO  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

America,  with  a  colleague  to  help  him.  The  pair  were 
to  have  six  hundred  pounds  a  year  between  them,  if  they 
could  make  that  sum  out  of  the  profits  of  the  office.  For 
four  years  the  balance  was  against  them  ;  but  at  the  end 
of  that  time  the  department,  managed  according  to  the 
precepts  of  "  The  Way  to  Wealth  "  in  Poor  Richard's 
Almanac,  began  to  pay,  and  paid  ever  better  yearly, 
until  it  yielded  the  Crown  a  net  receipt  three  times  as 
large  as  that  of  the  Post  Office  in  Ireland.  So  much 
he  did  for  himself,  and  so  much  more  he  was  enabled 
to  do  for  others,  by  a  strict  obedience  to  the  promptings 
of  a  mother-wit  which,  in  great  things  as  in  small,  was 
all  but  infallible,  and  by  a  knowledge  of  human  nature 
diplomatic  even  to  the  verge  of  wiliness.  When  he 
had  a  project  on  foot,  he  would  put  his  vanity  in  the 
back-ground,  and  would  represent  the  matter  as  the 
plan  of  a  number  of  friends,  who  had  requested  him  to 
go  about  and  recommend  it  to  public  favour  and  support. 
To  conciliate  an  enemy,  if  all  other  means  failed,  he 
would  beg  of  him  a  trifling  service,  which  in  decency 
could  not  be  refused  ;  relying  on  the  maxim  that  "  He 
who  has  once  done  you  a  kindness  will  be  more  ready 
to  do  you  another  than  he  whom  you  have  yourself 
obliged."  For  the  furtherance  of  all  his  undertakings, 
he  had  a  powerful  instrument  in  a  newspaper  as  respect- 
able as  it  was  readable ;  which,  with  a  fine  prescience 
of  the  possible  dangers  of  a  free  press  to  America,  and 
not  to  America  alone,  he  steadily  refused  to  make  the 
vehicle  of  scurrilous  gossip  and  personal  detraction. 
By  such  arts  as  these  he  fulfilled  to  the  letter  the  augury 
of  his  good  old  father,  who  in  past  days  loved  to  remind 
him  that  a  man  diligent  in  his  calling  should  stand 
before  Kings,  and  not  before  mean  men.  "  I  did  not 
think,"  said  Franklin,  "  that  I  should  ever  literally  stand 
before  Kings,  which,  however,  has  since  happened  ;  for 
I  have  stood  before  five,  and  even  had  the  honour  of 
sitting  down  with  one,  the  King  of  Denmark,  to  dinner." 
Franklin  had  the  habit,  which  was  the  basis  of  his 
originality,  of  practising  himself  what  he  preached  to 


GEORGE    WASHINGTON  51 

others.  He  kept  his  accounts  in  morals  as  minutely  as 
in  business  matters.  He  drew  up  a  catalogue  of -twelve 
virtues  which  it  was  essential  to  cultivate,  commencing 
with  Temperance  and  ending  with  Chastity ;  to  which 
at  a  subsequent  period  a  Quaker  friend,  who  knew  him 
well,  advised  him  to  add  Humility.  "  My  intention,"  he 
wrote,  "  being  to  acquire  the  habitude  of  those  virtues, 
I  judged  it  would  be  well  not  to  distract  my  attention 
by  attempting  the  whole  at  once,  but  to  fix  it  on  one  of 
them  at  a  time ;  and,  when  I  should  be  master  of  that, 
then  to  proceed  to  another,  till  I  should  have  gone 
through  the  thirteen.  And,  as  the  previous  acquisition 
of  some  might  facilitate  the  acquisition  of  certain  others, 
I  arranged  them  with  that  view."  By  the  time  he  be- 
came Joint  Postmaster-General  of  America,  he  had 
made  his  ground  sure  enough  to  justify  him  in  relaxing 
his  vigilance,  though  he  carried  his  little  book  on  all  his 
voyages  as  a  precaution  and  a  reminder.  The  Joint 
Postmaster-General  of  England,  who  was  no  other  than 
the  Earl  of  Sandwich,  would  not  have  got  very  far  along 
the  list  of  virtues,  at  whichever  end  he  had  begun. 

The  leaders  of  thought  in  America,  and  those  who  in 
coming  days  were  the  leaders  of  war,  had  all  been  bred 
in  one  class  or  another  of  the  same  severe  school, 
Samuel  Adams,  who  started  and  guided  New  England 
in  its  resistance  to  the  Stamp  Act,  was  a  Calvinist  by 
conviction.  The  austere  purity  of  his  household  recalled 
an  English  home  in  the  Eastern  Counties  during  the 
early  half  of  the  seventeenth  century.  He  held  the 
political  creed  of  the  fathers  of  the  colony  ;  and  it  was  a 
faith  as  real  and  sacred  to  him  as  it  had  been  to  them. 
His  fortune  was  small.  Even  in  that  city  of  plain  liv- 
ing, men  blamed  him  because  he  did  not  take  sufficient 
thought  for  the  morrow  ;  but  he  had  a  pride  which  knew 
no  shame  in  poverty,  and  an  integrity  far  superior  to  its 
temptations.  Alexander  Hamilton,  serving  well  and 
faithfully,  but  sorely  against  the  grain,  as  a  clerk  in  a 
merchant's  office,  had  earned  and  saved  the  means  of 

£2 


52  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

putting  himself,  late  in  the  day,  to  college.  Jefferson, 
who  inherited  wealth,  used  it  to  obtain  the  highesT  edu- 
cation which  his  native  country  could  then  provide ; 
entered  a  profession ;  and  worked  at  it  after  such  a 
fashion  that  by  thirty  he  was  the  leading  lawyer  of  his 
colony,  and  that  no  less  a  colony  than  Virginia.  The 
future  warriors  of  the  Revolution  had  a  still  harder 
apprenticeship.  Israel  Putnam  had  fought  the  Indians 
and  the  French  for  a  score  of  years,  and  in  a  score  of 
battles;  leading  his  men  in  the  dress  of  a  woodman, 
with  firelock  on  shoulder  and  hatchet  at  side  ;  a  powder 
horn  under  his  right  arm,  and  a  bag  of  bullets  at  his 
waist,  and,  (as  the  distinctive  equipment  of  an  officer,) 
a  pocket  compass  to  guide  their  marches  through  the 
forest.  He  had  known  what  it  was  to  have  his  comrades 
scalped  before  his  eyes,  and  to  stand  gashed  in  the  face 
with  a  tomahawk,  and  bound  to  the  trunk  of  a  tree,  with 
a  torture-fire  crackling  about  him.  From  adventures 
which,  in  the  back  settlements,  were  regarded  merely  as 
the  harder  side  of  a  farmer's  work,  he  would  go  home  to 
build  fences  with  no  consciousness  of  heroism,  and  still 
less  with  any  anticipation  of  the  world-famous  scenes  for 
his  part  in  which  these  experiences  of  the  wilderness 
were  training  him.  Nathanael  Greene,  the  ablest  of 
Washington's  lieutenants,  —  of  those  at  any  rate  who 
remained  true  to  their  cause  from  first  to  last,  —  was 
one  of  eight  sons,  born  in  a  house  of  a  single  story. 
His  father  combined  certain  humble  trades  with  the 
care  of  a  small  farm,  and,  none  the  less  or  the  worse  on 
account  of  his  week-day  avocations,  was  a  preacher  of 
the  gospel.  "  The  son,"  Mr.  Bancroft  tells  us,  "  excelled 
in  diligence  and  manly  sports.  None  of  his  age  could 
wrestle,  or  skate,  or  run  better  than  he,  or  stand  before 
him  as  a  neat  ploughman  and  skilful  mechanic."  Under 
such  literary  and  scientific  guidance  as  he  could  find 
among  his  neighbours,  he  learned  geometry,  and  its 
application  to  the  practical  work  of  a  new  country.  He 
read  poetry  and  philosophy,  as  they  are  read  by  a  man 
of  many  and  great  thoughts,  whose  books  are  few  but 


GEORGE    WASHINGTON  53 

good.  Above  all,  he  made  a  special  study  of  Plutarch 
and  of  Caesar,  —  authors  who,  whether  in  a  translation, 
or  in  the  original  Greek  and  Latin,  never  give  out  their 
innermost  meaning  except  to  brave  hearts  on  the  eve 
grave  events.1 

Meantime  the  military  chief  upon  whom  the  main 
weight  of  responsibility  was  to  rest  had  been  disciplined 
for  his  career  betimes.  At  an  age  when  a  youth  of  his 
rank  in  England  would  have  been  shirking  a  lecture  in 
order  to  visit  Newmarket,  or  settling  the  colour  of  his 
first  lace  coat,  Washington  was  surveying  the  valleys  of 
the  Alleghany  Mountains.  He  slept  in  all  weathers 
under  the  open  sky ;  he  swam  his  horses  across  rivers 
swollen  with  melted  snow ;  and  he  learned,  as  sooner  or 
later  a  soldier  must,  to  guess  what  was  on  the  other  side 
of  the  hill,  and  to  judge  how  far  the  hill  itself  was  dis- 
tant. At  nineteen  he  was  in  charge  of  a  district  on  the 
frontier;  and  at  twenty-two  he  fought  his  first  battle, 
with  forty  men  against  five  and  thirty,  and  won  a  victory, 
on  its  own  small  scale,  as  complete  as  that  of  Quebec. 
The  leader  of  the  French  was  killed,  and  all  his  party 
shot  down  or  taken.  It  was  an  affair  which,  coming  at 
one  of  the  rare  intervals  when  the  world  was  at  peace, 
made  a  noise  as  far  off  as  Europe,  and  gained  for  the 
young  officer  in  London  circles  a  tribute  of  hearty  praise, 
with  its  due  accompaniment  of  envy  and  misrepresenta- 
tion. Horace  Walpole  gravely  records  in  his  Memoirs 
of  George  the  Second  that  Major  Washington  had  con- 
cluded the  letter  announcing  his  success  with  the  words  : 
"  I  heard  the  bullets  whistle,  and,  believe  me,  there  is 
something  charming  in  the  sound."  Of  course  there  was 
nothing  of  the  sort  in  the  despatch,  which  in  its  business- 
like simplicity  might  have  been  written  by  Wellington 
at  six  and  forty.  Many  years  afterwards  a  clergyman, 

1  Those  who  read  or  write  about  the  American  Revolution  owe  great 
obligations  to  Mr.  Bancroft.  His  History  of  the  United  States  of  America 
supplies  a  vast  mass  of  detail,  illuminated  by  a  fine  spirit  of  liberty,  which 
is  inspired  indeed  by  patriotism,  but  is  not  bounded  in  its  scope  by  any 
limitations  of  country  or  of  century. 


54  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

braver  even  than  Washington,  asked  him  if  the  story  was 
true.  "  If  I  said  so,"  replied  the  General,  "  it  was  when 
I  was  young." 

But  his  was  a  fame  which  struck  its  roots  deepest  in 
discouragement,  and  even  in  defeat;  and  that  unwelcome 
feature  in  his  destiny  he  soon  had  cause  to  recognise. 
In  July,  r/55,  he  came  from  the  ambuscade  in  front  of 
Fort  Duquesne  with  thirty  men  alive  out  of  his  three 
companies  of  Virginians ;  with  four  shot-holes  in  his  coat ; 
and  a  name  for  coolness  and  conduct  which  made  him 
the  talk  of  the  whole  empire,  and  the  pride  of  the  colony 
that  bore  him.1  During  the  three  coming  years,  as  Com- 
mander-in-Chief  of  her  forces,  he  did  his  utmost  to  keep 
her  borders  safe  and  her  honour  high.  For  himself  it 
was  a  season  of  trial,  sore  to  bear,  but  rich  in  lessons. 
The  Governor  of  Virginia  grudged  him  rank  and  pay,  and 
stinted  him  in  men  and  means ;  lost  no  opportunity  of 
reminding  him  that  he  was  a  provincial  and  not  a  royal 
officer ;  and  made  himself  the  centre  of  military  intrigues 
which  gave  Washington  a  foretaste  of  what  he  was  to 
endure  at  the  hands  of  Charles  Lee,  and  Gates,  and  Bene- 
dict Arnold,  in  the  darkest  hours  of  his  country's  history. 
But  a  time  came  when  William  Pitt,  who  understood 
America,  was  in  a  position  to  insist  on  fair  play  and  equal 
treatment  to  the  colonists  who  were  supporting  so  large 
a  share  in  the  burdens  and  dangers  of  the  war.  Under 
his  auspices  Washington  directed  the  advanced  party  of 
an  expedition  which  placed  the  British  flag  on  Fort 
Duquesne,  and  performed  the  last  offices  to  the  mortal 
remains  of  those  British  soldiers  who  had  perished  in  the 
woods  which  covered  the  approaches  to  the  fatal  strong- 
hold. After  this  success,  which  made  his  native  province 
as  secure  from  invasion  as  Warwickshire,  the  young  man 

1  Long  before  Washington  reached  the  age  of  thirty,  his  fame  was  solidly 
established  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic.  He  was  born  in  1732;  and 
in  1759  the  Rev.  Andrew  Burnaby,  Archdeacon  of  Leicester  and  Vicar  of 
Greenwich,  visited  Mount  Vernon  during  the  first  year  of  Washington's 
proprietorship,  and  saw  it  with  admiration  and  approval.  "This  place," 
the  traveller  wrote,  "  is  the  property  of  Colonel  Washington,  and  truly  de- 
serving of  its  owner." 


COLONIAL   LOYALTY  AND  PROSPERITY  55 

retired  into  private  life,  with  no  recompense  for  his  ser- 
vices except  the  confidence  and  gratitude  of  his  fellow-  \ 
citizens.  He  had  received  a  practical  education  in  the 
science  of  generalship  such  as  few  except  born  princes 
have  ever  acquired  by  six  and  twenty,  combined  with  a 
mental  and  moral  drilling  more  indispensable  still  to  one 
whose  military  difficulties,  however  exceptionally  arduous, 
were  the  smallest  part  of  the  ordeal  laid  up  for  him  in 
the  future. 

Such  were  the  men  who  had  been  reluctantly  drawn 
by  their  own  sense  of  duty,  and  by  the  urgent  appeals  of 
friends  and  neighbours,  into  the  front  rank  of  a  conflict 
which  was  none  of  their  planning.  Some  of  them  were 
bred  in  poverty,  and  all  of  them  lived  in  tranquil  and 
modest  homes.  They  made  small  gains  by  their  private 
occupations,  and  did  much  public  service  for  very  little 
or  for  nothing,  and  in  many  cases  out  of  their  own 
charges.  They  knew  of  pensions  and  sinecures  only  by 
distant  hearsay  ;  and  ribands  or  titles  were  so  much  out- 
side their  scope  that  they  had  not  even  to  ask  themselves 
what  those  distinctions  were  worth.  Their  antecedents 
and  their  type  of  character  were  very  different  from  those 
of  any  leading  Minister  in  the  British  Cabinet ;  and  they 
were  likely  to  prove  dangerous  customers  when  the  one 
class  of  men  and  of  ideas  was  brought  into  collision  with 
the  other.  While  Washington  and  the  Adamses  led 
laborious  days,  the  English  statesmen  who  moulded  the 
destinies  of  America  into  such  an  unlooked-for  shape 
were  coming  to  the  front  by  very  different  methods. 
They  had  for  the  most  part  trod  an  easier  though  a  more 
tortuous  path  to  place  and  power ;  or  rather  to  the  power 
of  doing  as  their  monarch  bade  them.  George  the 
Third's  system  of  personal  government  had  long  become 
an  established  fact,  and  the  career  of  an  aspirant  to  of- 
fice under  that  system  was  now  quite  an  old  story.  "A 
young  man  is  inflamed  with  love  of  his  country.  Liberty 
charms  him.  He  speaks,  writes,  and  drinks  for  her.  He 
searches  records,  draws  remonstrances,  fears  Preroga- 


56  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

tive.  A  secretary  of  the  Treasury  waits  on  him  in  the 
evening.  He  appears  next  morning  at  a  minister's 
levee.  He  goes  to  Court,  is  captivated  by  the  King's 
affability,  moves  an  address,  drops  a  censure  on  the  lib- 
erty of  the  press,  kisses  hands  for  a  place,  bespeaks  a 
Birthday  coat,  votes  against  Magna  Charta,  builds  a 
house  in  town,  lays  his  farms  into  pleasure-grounds  under 
the  inspection  of  Mr.  Brown,  pays  nobody,  games,  is 
undone,  asks  a  reversion  for  three  lives,  is  refused,  finds 
the  constitution  in  danger,  and  becomes  a  patriot  once 
more."  l  That  passage  would  be  no  libel  if  applied  to 
all  except  a  few  members  of  the  Government ;  —  a  Gov- 
ernment which  was  controlled  by  the  Bedfords,  and  ad- 
vised on  legal  questions  by  Wedderburn,  whose  creed 
was  self-interest ;  and  which  was  soon  to  be  advised  on 
military  questions  by  Lord  George  Germaine,  who  had 
forfeited  his  reputation  by  refusing  to  bring  forward  the 
cavalry  at  Minden.  It  was  a  cruel  fate  for  a  country 
possessing  statesmen  like  Chatham  and  Burke,  a  jurist 
like  Camden,  and  soldiers  with  the  unstained  honour  and 
solid  professional  attainments  of  Conway  and  Barre. 
With  such  talents  lying  unemployed,  and  such  voices 
crying  unheeded,  the  nation  was  precipitated  into  a 
gratuitous  and  deplorable  policy  by  men  who  did  not  so 
much  as  believe  in  the  expediency  of  the  course  which 
they  were  pursuing.  To  the  worse,  and  unfortunately 
the  abler,  section  of  the  Ministry,  the  right  and  wrong 
of  the  question  mattered  not  one  of  the  straws  in  which 
their  champagne  bottles  were  packed ;  while  the  better 
of  them,  knowing  perfectly  well  that  the  undertaking  on 
which  they  had  embarked  was  a  crime  and  a  folly,  with 
sad  hearts  and  sore  consciences  went  into  the  business, 
and  some  of  them  through  the  business,  because  the 
King  wished  it. 

And  yet,  of  all  the  political  forces  then  in  existence, 
the  King's  influence  was  the  very  last  which  ought 
to  have  been  exerted  against  the  cause  of  concord.  He 

1  The  Spectator.  Number  None,  written  by  Nobody.  Sunday,  January 
igth,  1772. 


COLONIAL  LOYALTY  AND  PROSPERITY  57 

might  well  have  been  touched  by  the  persistence  with 
which  his  American  subjects  continued  to  regard  him 
as  standing  towards  them  in  that  relation  which  a  sov- 
ereign "born  and  bred  a  Briton  "  should  of  all  others 
prefer.  A  law-respecting  people,  who  did  not  care  to 
encroach  on  the  privileges  of  others,  and  liked  still  less 
to  have  their  own  rights  invaded,  they  were  slow  to  de- 
tect the  tricks  which  of  recent  years  had  been  played 
with  the  essential  doctrines  of  the  English  Constitution. 
When  the  home  Government  ill-used  them,  they  blamed 
the  Ministry,  and  pleased  themselves  by  believing  that 
the  King,  if  he  ever  could  contemplate  the  notion  of 
stretching  his  prerogative,  would  be  tempted  to  do  so 
for  the  purpose  of  protecting  them.  George  the  Third 
was  the  object  of  hope  and  warm  devotion  in  America 
at  the  moment  when,  in  the  City  of  London,  and  among 
the  freeholders  of  the  English  counties,  he  was  in  the 
depths  of  his  unpopularity.  In  the  April  of  1768  the 
King,  if  he  had  listened  to  any  adviser  except  his  own 
stout  heart,  would  not  have  ventured  to  show  himself 
outside  his  palace.  His  Lord  Steward  was  exchanging 
blows  with  the  angry  Liverymen  at  the  doors  of  the 
Presence  Chamber ;  the  Grand  Jury  of  Middlesex  was 
refusing  to  return  the  rioters  for  trial;  and  Junius 
could  not  attack  the  Crown  too  ferociously,  or  flatter 
Wilkes  too  grossly,  to  please  the  public  taste.  But  in 
that  very  month  Franklin,  writing  to  a  Pennsylvanian 
correspondent  a  sentiment  with  which  almost  every 
Pennsylvanian  would  have  concurred,  expressed  his 
conviction  that  some  punishment  must  be  preparing 
for  a  people  who  were  ungratefully  abusing  the  best 
constitution,  and  the  best  monarch,  any  nation  was  ever 
blessed  with.  A  year  afterwards,  in  the  letter  which 
conveyed  to  his  employers  in  America  the  unwelcome 
intelligence  that  the  House  of  Commons  had  refused 
to  repeal  Townshend's  custom-duties,  Franklin  carefully 
discriminated  between  the  known  ill-will  entertained 
by  Parliament  towards  the  colonies,  and  the  presumed 
personal  inclinations  of  the  King.  "  I  hope  nothing 


58  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

that  has  happened,  or  may  happen,  will  diminish  in  the 
least  our  loyalty  to  our  sovereign  or  affection  for  this 
nation  in  general.  I  can  scarcely  conceive  a  King  of 
better  dispositions,  or  more  exemplary  virtues,  or  more 
truly  desirous  of  promoting  the  welfare  of  all  his 
subjects.  The  body  of  this  people,  too,  is  of  a  noble 
and  generous  nature,  loving  and  honouring  the  spirit  of 
liberty,  and  hating  arbitrary  power  of  all  sorts.  We 
have  many,  very  many,  friends  among  them."  Six 
years  afterwards,  when  the  first  blood  had  been  shed,  — 
when  George  the  Third  was  writing  to  his  Minister  to 
express  his  delight  at  the  cruel  laws  that  were  passed 
against  the  colonists,  and  his  discontent  with  every 
English  public  man  who  still  regarded  his  brethren 
across  the  water  with  friendly,  or  even  tolerant,  feelings, 
—  this  letter,  with  others  from  the  same  hand,  was 
seized  by  a  British  officer  in  Boston,  and  sent  to  Lon- 
don to  be  submitted  to  his  Majesty's  inspection.  With 
what  sensations  must  he  then  have  read  the  evidence  of  a 
love  and  a  loyalty  which  by  that  time  were  dead  for  ever  ! 
Franklin,  in  the  passage  which  has  been  quoted,  did 
well  to  give  the  British  people  their  share  in  the  good- 
will which  America  felt  towards  the  British  sovereign. 
The  colonists  were  favourably  disposed  to  George  the 
Third  not  only  for  himself,  or  for  his  supposed  self,  but 
because  he  was  the  great  representative  of  the  mother- 
country,  —  the  figurehead  of  the  stately  ship  which  so 
long  had  carried  the  undivided  fortunes  of  their  race. 
They  loved  the  King  because  they  dearly  loved  the 
name,  the  associations,  the  literature,  the  religious  faith, 
the  habits,  the  sports,  the  art,  the  architecture,  the 
scenery,  the  very  soil,  of  his  kingdom.  That  love  was 
acknowledged  in  pathetic  language  by  men  who  had 
drawn  their  swords  against  us  because,  willing  to  owe 
everything  else  to  England,  they  did  not  recognise  her 
claim  to  measure  them  out  their  portion  of  liberty. 
The  feeling  entertained  towards  her  by  some  of  the  best 
of  those  who  were  forced  by  events  to  enroll  themselves 
among  her  adversaries  is  well  exemplified  by  the  career 


COLONIAL  LOYALTY  AND  PROSPERITY  59 

and  the  writings  of  Alexander  Garden.  Born  in  South 
Carolina,  he  had  been  sent  to  Europe  for  his  education ; 
and  when  he  came  to  man's  estate,  he  defied  a  Loyalist 
father  in  order  to  fight  for  the  Revolution  under  Nathan- 
ael  Greene  and  Henry  Lee.  In  his  later  years  he  collected 
an  enormous  multitude  of  personal  anecdotes  relating 
to  the  great  struggle,  told  with  transparent  fidelity,  but 
infused  with  no  common  dose  of  that  bombastic  element 
which  in  our  generation  has  died  out  from  American 
literature,  but  not  before  it  has  made  for  itself  an  imper- 
ishable name.  "  One  truth,"  (so  Garden  wrote  in  his 
better  and  less  ornate  style,)  "comes  home  to,  the  recol- 
lection of  every  man  who  lived  in  those  days.  The  at- 
tachment to  England  was  such  that  to  whatever  the 
colonists  wished  to  affix  the  stamp  of  excellence  the 
title  of  '  English  '  was  always  given.  To  reside  in  Eng- 
land was  the  object  of  universal  desire,  the  cherished 
hope  of  every  bosom.  It  was  considered  as  the  delight- 
ful haven,  where  peace  and  happiness  were  alone  to  be 
looked  for.  A  parent  sending  his  sons  to  Eton  or 
Westminster  would  say  :  '  I  am  sending  my  sons  home 
for  their  education.'  If  he  himself  should  cross  the 
Atlantic,  though  but  for  a  summer  season,  to  witness 
their  progress,  he  would  say,  '  I  am  going  home  to  visit 
my  children.'  " 

The  esteem  and  veneration  of  America  had  been  con- 
centrated all  the  more  upon  the  throne  itself,  because 
there  were  very  few  British  statesmen  who  were  famous 
and  popular  in  the  colonies.  The  difficulties  of  locomo- 
tion were  still  so  great  that  not  one  rural  constituent,  out 
of  a  hundred,  in  England  had  ever  heard  his  member 
speak  in  the  House  of  Commons.  It  was  hard  enough 
even  for  a  Yorkshireman,  or  a  Cornishman,  to  feel  much 
enthusiasm  for  orators  meagrely  reported  after  the  whim- 
sical methods  then  in  fashion  ; 1  and  to  an  average  New 
Englander  the  most  celebrated  personalities  in  the  West- 

1  The  Parliamentary  Reports  in  the  Gentleman's  Magazine  were,  for  a 
long  while  together,  composed  in  the  language  of  Gulliver's  Travels.  The 
reader  was  informed  how  the  Nardac  Poltrand  had  moved  an  Address  in 


6o  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

minster  Parliament  were  mere  names,  and  nothing  more. 
About  any  individual  Right  Honourable  gentleman,  or 
Lord  Temporal,  the  colonists  knew  little,  and  cared  less  ; 
and  their  only  concern  with  Lords  Spiritual  was  to  insist, 
obstinately  and  most  successfully,  that  they  should  keep 
themselves  on  their  own  side  of  the  Atlantic.  But  at 
last  a  man  arose  whose  deeds  spoke  for  him,  and  the 
fragments  of  whose  eloquence  were  passed  far  and  wide 
from  mouth  to  ear,  and  did  not  lose  the  stamp  of  their 
quality  in  the  carrying.  With  his  broad  heart,  his  swift 
perception,  and  his  capacious  intellect,  Chatham  knew 
America,  and  he  loved  her ;  and  he  was  known  and  loved 
by  her  in  return.  He  had  done  more  for  her  than  any 
ruler  had  done  for  any  country  since  William  the  Silent 
saved  and  made  Holland ;  and  she  repaid  him  with  a 
true  loyalty.  When  the  evil  day  came,  it  was  to  Chatham 
that  she  looked  for  the  good  offices  which  might  avert 
an  appeal  to  arms.  When  hostilities  had  broken  out, 
she  fixed  on  him  her  hopes  of  an  honourable  peace. 
And  when  he  died,  — in  the  very  act  of  confessing  her 
wrongs,  though  of  repudiating  and  condemning  the 
establishment  of  that  national  independence  on  which 
her  own  mind  was  by  that  time  irrevocably  set,  —  she 
refused  to  allow  that  she  had  anything  to  forgive  him, 
and  mourned  him  as  a  father  of  her  people. 

His  name  recalled  proud  memories,  in  whatever  part 
of  the  colonies  it  was  spoken.  Under  his  guidance, 
throughout  a  war  fertile  in  splendid  results,  Americans 
had  fought  side  by  side  with  Englishmen  as  compatriots 
rather  than  as  auxiliaries.  They  had  given  him  cheer- 
fully, in  men,  in  money,  and  in  supplies,  whatever  he 
had  asked  to  aid  the  national  cause  and  secure  the 
common  safety.  On  one  single  expedition  nine  thou- 
sand provincials  had  marched  from  the  Northern  dis- 

the  House  of  Hurgoes,  complaining  of  the  injuries  sustained  by  Lilliputian 
subjects  trading  in  Columbia  ;  and  how  the  Hurgo  Ghewor  had  replied 
that  "  ungrounded  jealousy  of  Blefuscu  had  already  cost  the  Treasury  of 
Lilliput  no  less  than  five  hundred  thousand  sprugs."  An  editor  was  driven 
to  such  devices  in  the  hope  of  baffling  or  conciliating  the  government 
censors. 


COLONIAL  LOYALTY  AND  PROSPERITY  6l 

tricts  alone.  The  little  colony  of  Connecticut  had  five 
thousand  of  her  citizens  under  arms.  Massachusetts 
raised  seven  thousand  militia-men,  and  taxed  herself 
at  the  rate  of  thirteen  shillings  and  fourpence  in  the 
pound  of  personal  income.  New  Jersey  expended,  dur- 
ing every  year  of  the  war,  at  the  rate  of  a  pound  a  head 
for  each  of  her  inhabitants.  That  wa-s  how  the  French 
were  cleared  from  the  Great  Lakes,  and  from  the  valley 
and  the  tributaries  of  the  Ohio.  That  was  how  Ticon- 
deroga  and  Crown  Point  fell,  and  the  way  was  opened  for 
the  siege  of  Quebec  and  the  conquest  of  the  Canadian 
Dominion.  What  they  had  done  before,  the  colonists 
were  willing  and  ready  to  do  again,  if  they  were  allowed 
to  do  it  in  their  own  fashion.  In  every  successive  colli- 
sion with  a  foreign  enemy  England  would  have  found 
America's  power  to  assist  the  mother-country  doubled, 
and  her  will  as  keen  as  ever.  The  colonies  which,  for 
three  livelong  years  between  the  spring  of  1775  and  the 
spring  of  1778,  held  their  own  against  the  unbroken  and 
undiverted  strength  of  Britain,  would  have  made  short 
work  of  any  army  of  invasion  that  the  Court  of  Ver- 
sailles, with  its  hands  full  in  Europe,  could  have  de- 
tached to  recover  Canada  or  to  subdue  New  England. 
Armed  vessels  in  great  number  would  have  been  fitted 
out  by  a  patriotism  which  never  has  been  averse  to  that 
enticing  form  of  speculation,  and  would  have  been 
manned  by  swarms  of  handy  and  hardy  seamen,  who  in 
war-time  found  privateering  safer  work  than  the  fisher- 
ies, and  vastly  more  exciting.  The  seas  would  have 
been  made  so  hot  by  the  colonial  corsairs  that  no  French 
or  Spanish  trader  would  have  shown  her  nose  outside 
the  ports  of  St.  Domingo  or  Cuba  except  under  an  escort 
numerous  enough  to  invite  the  grim  attentions  of  a  Brit- 
ish squadron.  But  it  was  a  very  different  matter  that 
America  should  be  called  upon  to  maintain  a  standing 
army  of  royal  troops,  at  a  moment  when  not  a  grain  of 
our  powder  was  being  burned  in  anger  on  the  surface 
of  the  globe ;  and  that  those  troops  should  be  quartered 
permanently  within  her  borders,  and  paid  out  of  Ameri- 


62  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

can  taxes  which  the  British  Parliament  had  imposed, 
exacted  by  tax-gatherers  commissioned  by  the  British 
Ministry.  It  is  hard  to  understand  how  any  set  of 
statesmen,  who  knew  the  methods  which  Chatham  had 
employed  with  brilliant  success,  should  have  conceived 
the  design  of  using  German  mercenaries  and  Indian 
savages  to  coerce  English  colonists  into  defending  the 
Empire  in  exact  accordance  with  the  ideas  which  hap- 
pened to  find  favour  in  Downing  Street. 

So  great  was  the  value  of  America  for  fighting  pur- 
poses. But,  in  peace  and  war  alike,  her  contribution 
to  the  wealth,  the  power,  the  true  renown  of  England, 
exceeded  anything  which  hitherto  had  marked  the 
mutual  relations  of  a  parent  State  with  a  colony ;  and 
that  contribution  was  growing  fast.  Already  the  best 
of  customers,  she  took  for  her  share  more  than  a  fourth 
part  of  the  sixteen  million  pounds'  worth  in  annual  value 
at  which  the  British  exports  were  then  computed ;  and 
no  limit  could  be  named  to  the  expansion  of  a  trade 
founded  on  the  wants  of  a  population  which  had  doubled 
itself  within  a  quarter  of  a  century,  and  whose  standard 
of  comfort  was  rising  even  more  rapidly  than  its  num- 
bers. But  the  glory  which  was  reflected  on  our  country 
by  her  great  colony  was  not  to  be  measured  by  tons  of 
goods  or  thousands  of  dollars.  All  who  loved  England 
wisely,  dwelt  with  satisfaction  upon  the  prosperity  of 
America.  It  was  to  them  a  proud  thought  that  so 
great  a  mass  of  industry,  such  universally  diffused  com- 
fort, so  much  public  disinterestedness  and  private  virtue, 
should  have  derived  its  origin  from  our  firesides,  and 
have  grown  up  under  our  aegis. 

It  is  impossible  to  avoid  regretting  that  American 
society,  and  the  American  character,  were  not  allowed  to 
develop  themselves  in  a  natural  and  unbroken  growth 
from  the  point  which  they  had  reached  at  the  close  of 
the  first  century  and  a  half  of  their  history.  The  Revo- 
lutionary war  which  began  in  1775  changed  many  things 
and  troubled  many  waters ;  as  a  civil  war  always  has 
done,  and  always  must.  The  mutual  hatred  felt,  and  the 


COLONIAL  LOYALTY  AND  PROSPERITY  63 

barbarities  inflicted  and  suffered,  by  partisans  of  either 
side  in  Georgia  and  the  Carolinas  between  1776  and  1782 
left  behind  them  in  those  regions  habits  of  lawlessness 
and  violence,  evil  traces  of  which  lasted  into  our  life- 
time ;  and  as  for  the  Northern  States,  it  was  a  pity  that 
the  wholesome  and  happy  conditions  of  existence  pre- 
vailing there  before  the  struggle  for  Independence  were 
ever  disturbed ;  for  no  change  was  likely  to  improve 
them.  If  the  King,  as  a  good  shepherd,  was  thinking 
of  his  flock  and  not  of  himself,  it  is  hard  to  see  what  he 
hoped  to  do  for  the  benefit  of  the  colonists.  All  they 
asked  of  him  was  to  be  let  alone  ;  and  with  reason  ;  for 
they  had  as  just  cause  for  contentment  as  any  popula- 
tion on  the  surface  of  the  globe.  "  I  have  lately,"  wrote 
Franklin,  "  made  a  tour  through  Ireland  and  Scotland. 
In  those  countries  a  small  part  of  the  society  are  land- 
lords, great  noblemen,  and  gentlemen,  extremely  opu- 
lent, living  in  the  highest  affluence  and  magnificence. 
The  bulk  of  the  people  are  tenants,  extremely  poor, 
living  in  the  most  sordid  wretchedness,  in  dirty  hovels 
of  mud  and  straw,  and  clothed  only  in  rags.  I  thought 
often  of  the  happiness  of  New  England,  where  every 
man  is  a  freeholder,  has  a  vote  in  public  affairs,  lives  in 
a  tidy  warm  house,  has  plenty  of  good  food  and  fuel, 
with  whole  clothes  from  head  to  foot,  the  manufacture 
perhaps  of  his  own  family."  1 

It  was  no  wonder  that  they  were  freeholders ;  inas- 
much as  real  property  could  be  bought  for  little  in  the 
cultivated  parts  of  New  England,  and  for  next  to  noth- 
ing in  the  outlying  districts.  Land  was  no  dearer  as  the 
purchaser  travelled  southwards.  There  is  in  existence 
an  amusing  series  of  letters  from  a  certain  Alexander 
Mackrabie  in  America  to  his  brother-in-law  in  England : 
and  that  brother-in-law  knew  a  good  letter  from  a  dull 
one,  inasmuch  as  he  was  Philip  Francis.  In  1770  Mack- 
rabie wrote  from  Philadelphia  to  ask  what  possessed 
Junius  to  address  the  King  in  a  letter  "  past  all  endur- 
ance," and  to  inquire  who  the  devil  Junius  was.  He 

1  Benjamin  Franklin  to  Joshua  Badcock  ;  London,  13  January,  1772. 


64  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

sweetened  the  alarm  which  he  unconsciously  gave  to  his 
eminent  correspondent  by  offering  him  a  thousand  good 
acres  in  Maryland  for  a  hundred  and  thirty  pounds,  and 
assuring  him  that  farms  on  the  Ohio  would  be  "  as  cheap 
as  stinking  mackerel."  1  Colonists  whose  capital  con- 
sisted in  their  four  limbs,  especially  if  they  were  skilled 
mechanics,  had  no  occasion  to  envy  people  who  could 
buy  land,  or  who  had  inherited  it.  Social  existence  in 
America  was  profoundly  influenced  by  the  very  small 
variation  of  income,  and  still  smaller  of  expenditure,  at 
every  grade  of  the  scale.  The  Governor  of  a  great 
province  could  live  in  style  in  his  city  house  and  his 
country  house,  and  could  keep  his  coach  and  what  his 
guests  called  a  genteel  table,  on  five  hundred  pounds  a 
year,  or  something  like  thirty  shillings  for  each  of  his 
working  days.  A  ship's  carpenter,  in  what  was  for 
America  a  great  city,  received  five  and  sixpence  a  day, 
including  the  value  of  his  pint  of  rum,  the  amount  of 
alcohol  contained  in  which  was  about  an  equivalent  to 
the  Governor's  daily  allowance  of  Madeira.  The  Rector 
of  Philadelphia  Academy,  who  taught  Greek  and  Latin, 
received  two  hundred  pounds  a  year ;  the  Mathematical 
Professor  a  hundred  and  twenty-five  pounds ;  and  the 
three  Assistant  Tutors  sixty  pounds  apiece ;  —  all  in 
local  currency,  from  which  about  forty  per  cent,  would 
have  to  be  deducted  in  order  to  express  the  sums  in 
English  money.  In  currency  of  much  the  same  value  a 
house  carpenter  or  a  bricklayer  earned  eight  shillings 
a  day,  which  was  as  much  as  a  Mathematical  Professor, 
and  twice  as  much  as  an  Assistant  Tutor.2 

All  lived  well.     All  had  a  share  in  the  best  that  was 
going ;  and  the  best  was  far  from  bad.3     The  hot  buck- 

1  Memoirs  of  Sir  Philip  Francis  ;  vol.  i.,  p.  439. 

2  The  salaries  are  mentioned  in  various  letters  of  Franklin.     The  wages 
he  quotes  from  Adam  Smith,  who,  says  his  biographer,  "  had  been  in  the 
constant  habit  of  hearing  much  about  the  American  colonies  and  their 
affairs,  during  his  thirteen  years  in  Glasgow,  from  the  intelligent  merchants 
and  returned  planters  of  the  city."  —  Rae's  Life  of  Adam  Smith,  p.  266. 

8  The  bills  of  fare  of  a  Philadelphian  angling  club,  for  the  year  1762, 
have  been  published  by  the  Historical  Society  of  Pennsylvania.     On  June  I 


COLONIAL  LOYALTY  AND  PROSPERITY  65 

wheat  cakes,  the  peaches,  the  great  apples,  the  turkey 
or  wild-goose  on  the  spit,  and  the  cranberry  sauce  stew- 
ing in  the  skillet,  were  familiar  luxuries  in  every  house- 
hold. Authoritative  testimony  has  been  given  on  this 
point  by  Brillat  Savarin,  in  his  "  Physiologic  de  Gout,"  — 
the  most  brilliant  book  extant  on  that  which,  if  mankind 
were  candid,  would  be  acknowledged  as  the  most  uni- 
versally interesting  of  all  the  arts.  When  he  was  driven 
from  his  country  by  the  French  Revolution,  he  dined 
with  a  Connecticut  yeoman  on  the  produce  of  the  gar- 
den, the  farmyard,  and  the  orchard.  There  was  "a 
superb  piece  of  corned  beef,  a  stewed  goose,  and  a  mag- 
nificent leg  of  mutton,  with  vegetables  of  every  descrip- 
tion, two  jugs  of  cider,  and  a  tea-service,"  on  the  table 
round  which  the  illustrious  epicure,  the  host,  and  the 
host's  four  handsome  daughters  were  sitting.  For 
twenty  years  and  thirty  years  past  such  had  been  the 
Sunday  and  holiday  fare  of  a  New  England  freeholder ; 
except  that  in  1774  a  pretty  patriot  would  as  soon  have 
offered  a  guest  a  cup  of  vitriol  as  a  cup  of  tea.  A  mem- 
ber of  what  in  Europe  was  called  the  lower  class  had  in 
America  fewer  cares,  and  often  more  money,  than  those 
who,  in  less  favoured  lands,  would  have  passed  for  his 
betters.  His  children  were  taught  at  the  expense  of  the 
township ;  while  a  neighbour  who  aspired  to  give  his 
son  a  higher  education  was  liable  to  be  called  on  to  pay 
a  yearly  fee  of  no  less  than  a  couple  of  guineas.  And 
the  earner  of  wages  was  emancipated  from  the  special 
form  of  slavery  which  from  very  early  days  had  estab- 
lished itself  in  the  Northern  States,  —  the  tyranny  exer- 
cised over  the  heads  of  a  domestic  establishment  by 
those  whom  they  had  occasion  to  employ.1 

the  members  had  "  Beefsteaks,  six  chickens,  one  ham,  one  breast  of  veal, 
two  tongues,  two  chicken-pies,  one  quarter  of  lamb,  two  sheeps'  heads, 
peas,  salad,  radishes,  cream-cheese,  gooseberry-pies,  strawberries,  two 
gallons  of  spirits,  and  twenty-five  lemons  ;  "  and  they  sate  down  to  no 
worse  a  dinner  in  the  course  of  the  whole  season. 

1  "  You  can  have  no  idea,"  Mackrabie  wrote  to  Francis  in  1769,  "  of  the 
plague  we  have  with  servants  on  this  side  the  water.     If  you  bring  over  a 
good  one  he  is  spoilt  in  a  month.     Those  from  the  country  are  insolent 
VOL.  I.  F 


66  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

Equality  of  means,  and  the  total  absence  of  privilege, 
brought  about  their  natural  result  in  the  ease,  the 
simplicity,  the  complete  freedom  from  pretension,  which 
marked  the  intercourse  of  society.  The  great  had  once 
been  as  the  least  of  their  neighbours,  and  the  small 
looked  forward  some  day  to  be  as  the  best  of  them. 
James  Putnam,  the  ablest  lawyer  in  all  America,  loved 
to  walk  in  the  lane  where,  as  a  child  of  seven  years  old, 
he  drove  the  cows  to  pasture.  Franklin,  while  still  a 
poor  boy  living  on  eighteen  pence  a  week,  was  sought, 
and  almost  courted,  by  the  Governor  of  Pennsylvania  and 
the  Governor  of  New  York.  Confidence  in  a  future, 
which  never  deceived  the  industrious,  showed  itself  in 
early  marriages  ;  and  early  marriages  brought  numerous, 
healthy,  and  welcome  children.  There  was  no  search- 
ing of  heart  in  an  American  household  when  a  new 
pair  of  hands  was  born  into  the  world.  The  first 
Adams  who  was  a  colonist  had  eight  sons,  with  what- 
ever daughters  Heaven  sent  him ;  his  eldest  son  had  a 
family  of  twelve,  and  his  eldest  son  a  family  of  twelve 
again.  Franklin  had  seen  thirteen  of  his  own  father's 
children  sitting  together  round  the  table,  who  all  grew 
up,  and  who  all  in  their  turn  were  married.  "  With  us," 
he  wrote,  "  marriages  are  in  the  morning  of  life ;  our 
children  are  educated  and  settled  in  the  world  by  noon ; 
and  thus,  our  own  business  being  done,  we  have  an  after- 
noon and  evening  of  cheerful  leisure  to  ourselves." 

The  jolly  relative  of  Philip  Francis  took  a  less  roseate 
view  of  the  same  phenomenon.  "  The  good  people," 
he  wrote,  "  are  marrying  one  another  as  if  they  had  not 
a  day  to  live.  I  allege  it  to  be  a  plot  that  the  ladies, 
(who  are  all  politicians  in  America,)  are  determined 
to  raise  young  rebels  to  fight  against  old  England." 
Throughout  the  colonies  the  unmarried  state  was  held 

and  extravagant.  The  imported  Dutch  are  to  the  last  degree  ignorant  and 
awkward."  The  observations  made  by  this  rather  narrow-minded  Briton 
upon  the  other  nationalities  which  supplied  the  household  service  of 
America  had  better  be  read  in  the  original  book,  if  they  are  read  at  all.  — 
Memoirs  of  Sir  Philip  Francis ;  vol.  i.,  p.  435. 


COLONIAL  LOYALTY  AND  PROSPERITY  6/ 

in  scanty  honour.  Bachelors,  whether  in  the  cities  or 
villages,  were  poorly  supplied  with  consolations  and  dis- 
tractions. The  social  resources  of  New  York,  even  for 
a  hospitably  treated  stranger,  were  not  inexhaustible. 
"With  regard,"  Mackrabie  complained,  "to  the  people, 
manner,  living,  and  conversation,  one  day  shows  you  as 
much  as  fifty.  Here  are  no  diversions  at  all  at  present. 
I  have  gone  dining  about  from  house  to  house,  but  meet 
with  the  same  dull  round  of  topics  everywhere:  —  lands, 
Madeira  wine,  fishing  parties,  or  politics.  They  have  a 
vile  practice  here  of  playing  back-gammon,  a  noise  which 
I  detest,  which  is  going  forward  in  the  public  coffee- 
houses from  morning  till  night,  frequently  ten  or  a  dozen 
tables  at  a  time.  I  think  a  single  man  in  America  is 
one  of  the  most  wretched  beings  I  can  conceive."  The 
taverns  in  country  districts  were  uncomfortable,  and,  as 
centres  of  relaxation  and  sociable  discourse,  unlovely. 
Adams,  who  had  put  up  at  a  hundred  of  them,  com- 
plained that  a  traveller  often  found  more  dirt  than  enter- 
tainment and  accommodation  in  a  house  crowded  with 
people  drinking  flip  and  toddy,  and  plotting  to  get  the  land- 
lord elected  to  a  local  office  at  the  next  town's  meeting. 

In  a  new  country  the  graces  and  amenities,  —  and  all 
the  provisions  for  material,  intellectual,  and  what  little 
there  may  be  of  artistic,  pleasure,  —  are  within  the  home, 
and  not  outside  it.  Women  in  America  were  already 
treated  with  a  deference  which  was  a  sign  of  the  part 
they  played  in  the  serious  affairs  of  life.  They  had  not 
to  put  up  with  the  conventional  and  over-acted  homage 
which  in  most  European  countries  was  then  the  substi- 
tute for  their  due  influence  and  their  true  liberty.  Mar- 
ried before  twenty,  and  generally  long  before  twenty, 
they  received  in  the  schoolroom  an  education  of  the 
shortest,  and  something  of  the  flimsiest.  To  work  cor- 
nucopias and  Birds  of  Paradise  in  coloured  wools,  to 
construct  baskets  of  ornamental  shells,  and  to  accompany 
a  song  on  the  virginal,  the  spinet,  or  the  harpsichord, 
were  the  accomplishments  which  an  American  girl  had 
time  to  learn,  and  could  find  instructors  to  teach  her. 

F2 


68  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

But,  like  the  best  women  in  every  generation  before  OUT 
own,  their  most  valuable  attainments  were  those  which, 
in  the  intervals  of  domestic  cares,  they  taught  themselves 
with  a  favourite  author  in  their  hand,  and  their  feet  on 
the  fender.  In  their  literary  preferences  they  were  be- 
hindhand in  point  of  time ;  but  it  was  not  to  their  loss. 
John  Quincy  Adams,  the  second  President  of  his  race, 
relates  how  lovingly  and  thoroughly  his  mother  knew 
her  Shakespeare  and  her  Milton,  her  Dryden,  her  Pope, 
and  her  Addison ;  and  how,  when  she  was  in  need  of  a 
quotation  tinctured  with  modern  ideas  of  liberty,  she  had 
recourse  to  Young  and  Thomson.  He  well  remembered 
the  evening  when  the  cannon  had  fallen  silent  on  Bunker's 
Hill,  and  Massachusetts  began  to  count  her  losses.  A 
child  of  eight,  he  heard  Mrs.  Adams  apply  to  Joseph  War- 
ren, their  family  friend  and  family  physician,  the  lines,  — 
mannered  indeed,  and  stilted,  but  not  devoid  of  solemn  and 
sincere  feeling,  —  which  Collins  addressed  to  the  memory 
of  a  young  officer  who  had  been  killed  at  Fontenoy. 

We  need  not  go  to  sons  and  husbands  for  our  know- 
ledge of  what  the  matrons  of  the  Revolution  were.  The 
gentlemen  of  France,  who  came  to  the  help  of  America, 
were  quick  to  discern  the  qualities  which  dignified  and 
distinguished  her  women ;  and  it  is  to  the  credit  of  the 
young  fellows  that  they  eagerly  admired  an  ideal  of  con- 
duct which  might  have  been  supposed  to  be  less  to  the 
taste  of  a  soldier  of  passage  than  that  which  they  had 
left  behind  them  at  Paris.  It  is  difficult  to  believe  that 
the  Knight-errants  of  the  war  of  American  Independence, 
each  of  them  the  soul  of  chivalry,  belonged  to  the  same 
nation  as  certain  swashbucklers  of  Napoleon  who,  after 
trailing  their  sabres  over  Europe,  confided  to  the  chance 
reader  of  their  autobiographies  their  personal  successes, 
real  or  pretended,  among  beautiful  and  unpatriotic  women 
in  the  countries  which  they  had  visited  as  invaders.  After 
their  return  home  Lafayette  and.  De  Segur,  courageous 
in  the  drawing-room  as  in  the  field,  openly  proclaimed 
and  steadfastly  maintained  that  in  the  beauty,  elegance, 
and  talent  of  its  ladies  Boston  could  hold  its  own  with 


COLONIAL  LOYALTY  AND  PROSPERITY  69 

any  capital  city,  that  of  France  included.  De  Segur,  in 
particular,  astonished  and  charmed  his  hearers  by  his 
description  of  a  community  where  what  passed  as  gal- 
lantry in  Paris  was  called  by  a  very  plain  name  indeed ; 
where  women  of  station  rode,  drove,  and  walked  un- 
attended both  in  town  and  country ;  where  girls  of  six- 
teen trusted  themselves  to  the  escort  of  a  guest  who 
yesterday  had  been  a  stranger,  and  talked  to  him  as 
frankly  and  as  fast  as  if  he  had  been  a  cousin  or  a  brother ; 
and,  above  all,  where  a  young  Quakeress  who,  in  her 
white  dress  and  close  muslin  cap,  looked,  (though  he  did 
not  tell  her  so,)  like  a  nymph  rather  than  a  mortal,  lec- 
tured him  on  having  deserted  his  wife  and  children  to 
pursue  the  wicked  calling  of  a  soldier,  and  sternly  re- 
jected the  plea  that  he  had  severed  himself  from  all 
that  he  held  most  dear  in  order  to  fight  for  the  liberty 
of  her  country.  After  the  war  was  over,  De  Segur 
embodied  his  experience  and  his  observations  in  a  series 
of  predictions  concerning  the  future  of  the  United  States. 
He  clearly  foresaw  that  the  question  whether  the  South 
and  North  were  to  part  company  would  one  day  arise  in 
a  formidable  shape  ;  he  foretold  that  wealth  would  bring 
luxury,  and  luxury  corruption ;  but  with  regard  to  that 
private  morality  which,  of  all  that  he  found  in  America, 
he  approved  the  most,  he  did  not  venture  on  a  specific 
prophecy.  "  I  shall  be  told,"  he  wrote,  "  that  America 
will  not  always  preserve  these  simple  virtues  and  these 
pure  manners ;  but  if  she  preserves  them  only  for  a  cen- 
tury, that  at  any  rate  will  be  a  century  gained."1 

1  Voltaire,  an  old  friend  of  De  Segur's  mother,  in  half  a  dozen  sentences 
full  of  wisdom  and  good  feeling,  and  turned  as  only  he  could  turn  them, 
had  given  him  his  literary  blessing,  and  the  advice  to  keep  to  prose.  That 
advice  was  religiously  followed  by  a  family  which  handed  down  through 
three  generations,  in  unbroken  succession  from  father  to  son,  the  good 
traditions  of  the  memoir-writer.  There  is  an  extraordinary  likeness,  in 
form  and  substance,  between  the  writing  of  the  father,  who  served  in  the 
American  war,  and  afterwards  became  French  ambassador  to  Russia ;  of 
the  son,  who  told  the  story  of  Austerlitz,  and  the  retreat  from  Moscow  ;  and 
of  the  grandson,  author  of  the  Life  of  Count  Rostopchine.  Which  of  the 
three  wrote  best  is  a  problem  of  the  sort  that  to  those,  who  love  books,  wil] 
always  remain  the  idlest  of  questions. 


CHAPTER   III 

CHANGE  OF  VENUE  TO  ENGLAND  OF  TRIALS  FOR  TREA- 
SON. MILITARY  OCCUPATION  OF  BOSTON.  DIFFICUL- 
TIES CONNECTED  WITH  TRADE  AND  REVENUE  BECOME 
ACUTE 

SUCH  was  the  country,  and  such  the  people,  on  which 
the  British  Cabinet  now  tried  the  experiment  of  carry- 
ing through  a  political  policy  by  the  pressure  of  an 
armed  force.  They  were  blind  to  the  truth  which  Byron, 
a  genuine  statesman,  expressed  in  the  sentence,  "  The 
best  prophet  of  the  future  is  the  past ;  "  for  that  experi- 
ment had  never  succeeded  when  an  English-speaking 
population  was  made  the  subject  of  it.  It  had  been 
tried  under  the  Commonwealth  when  the  Major-Generals 
administered  England ;  and  the  Journal  of  George  Fox, 
read  side  by  side  with  Hudibras,  proves  that  the  saints 
liked  being  ruled  by  saints  in  red  coats  almost  as  little 
as  did  the  sinners.  It  had  been  tried  after  the  Restora- 
tion, when  the  Stuarts  espoused  the  cause  of  the  Bishops 
as  against  the  Scotch  Covenanters ;  and  the  result  was, 
over  the  whole  of  the  south  of  Scotland,  to  kill  the  cause 
of  the  Bishops  and  of  the  Stuarts  too.  And  in  1688  the 
wrath  and  terror  which  the  mere  threat  of  coercion  by 
an  Irish  army  excited  throughout  the  kingdom  did  much 
to  ruin  James  the  Second,  as  it  had  ruined  his  father  be- 
fore him. 

Now  the  same  remedy,  fatal  always  to  the  physician, 
was  applied  to  a  case  that  differed  from  those  which 
preceded  it  only  in  being  more  hopelessly  unsuited  to 
such  a  treatment.  The  character,  the  circumstances, 
and  the  history  of  the  inhabitants  of  New  England  made 
it  certain  that  they  would  feel  the  insult  bitterly  and 

70 


CHANGE    OF   VENUE  71 

resent  it  fiercely.  It  was  a  measure  out  of  which,  from 
the  very  nature  of  it,  no  good  could  be  anticipated;  and 
it  may  well  be  doubted  whether  the  authors  of  it,  in 
their  heart  of  hearts,  expected  or  desired  that  any  good 
should  come.  The  crime  of  Massachusetts  was  that  she 
refrained  from  buying  British  goods,  and  that  she  had 
petitioned  the  Crown  in  respectful  terms.  Fifty  regi- 
ments could  not  oblige  her  to  do  the  one,  or  make  her 
think  that  she  had  been  wrong  in  having  done  the  other. 
And,  in  truth,  the  action  of  the  British  Government  was 
intended  to  punish,  and  not  to  persuade.  It  was  a  de- 
vice essentially  of  the  same  sinister  class  as  the  Dragon- 
nades  which  preceded  the  Revocation  of  the  Edict  of 
Nantes;  less  trenchant,  indeed,  in  its  operation,  owing 
to  the  difference  in  type  of  the  instruments  employed ; 
for  British  soldiers  were  too  good  to  be  set  to  such  work, 
and  far  too  manly  and  kind-hearted  to  do  it  efficaciously. 
But  the  motives  that  suggested  and  brought  about  the 
military  occupation  of  Boston  showed  poorly,  in  one 
important  respect,  even  by  the  side  of  those  which  actu- 
ated Louis  the  Fourteenth  and  his  clerical  advisers.  In 
both  cases  there  was  ruffled  pride,  the  determination  at 
all  costs  to  get  the  upper  hand,  and  want  of  sympathy 
which  had  deepened  down  into  estrangement  and  posi- 
tive ill-will.  But  the  French  monarch  at  least  believed 
that,  by  making  his  subjects  miserable  in  this  world,  he 
would  possibly  save  their  souls  in  the  next,  and  would 
undoubtedly  cleanse  his  dominions  from  the  stain  of 
heresy ;  whereas  the  quarrel  between  George  the  Third 
and  his  people  beyond  the  sea  was  of  the  earth,  earthy. 
As  an  Elizabethan  poet  had  said  in  good  prose:  "  Some 
would  think  the  souls  of  princes  were  brought  forth  by 
some  more  weighty  cause  than  those  of  meaner  persons. 
They  are  deceived ;  there's  the  same  hand  to  them ;  the 
like  passions  sway  them.  The  same  reason  that  makes 
a  vicar  go  to  law  for  a  tithe-pig,  and  undo  his  neigh- 
bours, makes  them  spoil  a  whole  province,  and  batter 
down  goodly  cities  with  the  cannon."1 

1  Webster's  Duchess  of  Malfi,  Act  ii.,  Scene  I. 


72  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION' 

The  King  was  determined  to  stand  on  his  extreme 
rights;  and  he  met  his  match  in  the  Americans.  In 
their  case  he  had  to  do  with  people  accurately  and 
minutely  acquainted  with  what  was  due  to  them  and 
from  them,  and  little  likely  to  miss,  or  refrain  from 
pressing  to  the  utmost,  any  single  point  which  told  in 
their  favour.  Burke  was  informed  by  an  eminent  book- 
seller that  in  no  branch  of  his  business,  after  tracts  of 
popular  devotion,  were  so  many  volumes  exported  to 
1  the  colonies  as  those  which  related  to  the  law.  Nearly 
J  as  many  copies  of  Blackstone's  Commentaries  had  been 
!  sold  in  America  as  in  England.  So  eager  were  the 
colonists  to  read  our  treatises  on  jurisprudence  that  they 
had  fallen  into  the  way  of  reprinting  them  across  the 
Atlantic ;  a  habit,  it  must  be  allowed,  which  they  soon 
applied  on  a  generous  scale  to  more  attractive  classes 
of  literature.  Burke,  who  observed  and  investigated 
America  with  the  same  passionate  curiosity  that  he 
subsequently  bestowed  upon  India,  had  arrived  at  the 
conclusion  that  a  circumstance  which  made  against 
peace,  unless  the  British  Government  reverted  to  the 
paths  of  caution,  was  to  be  found  in  the  addiction  of 
the  colonists  to  the  study  of  the  law.  "  This  study,"  he 
said,  "  renders  men  acute,  inquisitive,  dexterous,  prompt 
in  attack,  ready  in  defence,  full  of  resources.  In  other 
countries  the  people,  more  simple,  and  of  a  less  mercurial 
cast,  judge  of  an  ill  principle  in  government  only  by  an 
actual  grievance ;  there  they  anticipate  the  evil,  and  judge 
of  the  pressure  of  the  grievance  by  the  badness  of  the 
principle.  They  augur  misgovernment  at  a  distance,  and 
snuff  the  approach  of  tyranny  in  every  tainted  breeze."  1 
The  times  were  such  that  the  lawyers  in  America, 
like  all  other  men  there,  had  to  choose  their  party.  In 
the  Government  camp  were  those  favoured  persons 
whom  the  Crown  regularly  employed  in  court,  and 
those  who  held,  or  looked  to  hold,  the  posts  of  distinc- 
tion and  emolument  with  which  the  colonies  abounded ; 

I1  Mr.  Burke's  Speech  on  moving  his  Resolution  for  Conciliation  with 
the  Colonies. 


CHANGE    OF   VENUE  73 

for  the  Bar  in  America,  as  in  Ireland  and  Scotland  to 
this  day,  was  a  public  service  as  well  as  a  profession. 
But,  with  these  exceptions,  most  lawyers  were  patriots ; 
for  the  same  reason  that,  (as  the  royal  Governors  com- 
plained), every  patriot  was,  or  thought  himself,  a  lawyer. 
The  rights  and  liberties  of  the  province  had  long  been 
the  all-pervading  topic  of  conversation  in  Massachusetts. 
There  were  few  briefs  for  a  learned  gentleman  who,  in 
General  Putnam's  tavern  or  over  Mr.  Hancock's  dining- 
table,  took  the  unpopular  side  in  an  argument ;  espe- 
cially if  he  did  not  know  how  to  keep  those  who  came 
to  him  for  advice  on  the  safe  side  of  a  penal  statute. 
"  Look  into  these  papers,"  said  an  English  Attorney- 
General  in  1768,  "and  see  how  well  these  Americans 
are  versed  in  the  Crown  law.  I  doubt  whether  they 
have  been  guilty  of  an  overt  act  of  treason,  but  I  am 
sure  that  they  have  come  within  a  hair's  breadth  of 
it."  1  Leading  merchants,  who  were  likewise  eminently 
respectable  smugglers  on  an  enormous  scale,  were  the 
best  clients  of  a  Boston  advocate.  Their  quarrels  with 
the  Commissioners  of  Revenue  brought  him  large  fees, 
and  coveted  opportunities  for  a  display  of  eloquence. 
His  wits  as  a  casuist  were  sharpened  by  a  life-time  of 
nice  steering  among  the  intricacies  of  the  commercial 
code ;  and  the  experience  which  he  thence  gained 
taught  him  as  a  politician  to  assume  higher  ground,  and 
to  demand  that  trade  should  be  as  free  and  open  to  Brit- 
ish subjects  in  the  New  World  as  it  was  to  those  in  the 
Old.2  His  public  attitude  was  stiffened  by  the  recollec- 
tion of  a  threat  which  had  been  levelled  against  his  pri- 
vate interests.  A  secondary,  but  an  evident  and  even 
confessed,  object  of  the  Stamp  Act  had  been  to  impose 
an  all  but  prohibitory  tax  upon  the  manufacture  of  legal 
documents,  and  thereby  to  injure  the  practice,  and  to  pare 

1  Bancroft's  History,  Epoch  III.,  chapter  37. 

2  These  are  the  words  of  Mr.  Sabine  in  his  Historical  Essay  at  the  com- 
mencement of  his  two  volumes  on  the  American  Loyalists.     His  descrip- 
tion of  the  opinions  prevalent  in  the  several  professions  at  the  commencement 
of  the  Revolution  is  amusing  and  instructive. 


74  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

away  the  gains,  of  those  unofficial  lawyers  among  whom 
were  to  be  found  the  most  skilful  and  stubborn  oppo- 
nents of  the  Government. 

Already  the  commercial  prosperity  of  the  mother- 
country  was  grievously  impaired.  The  colonists  had 
met  Charles  Townshend's  policy  by  an  agreement  not 
to  consume  British  goods ;  and  the  value  of  such  goods 
exported  to  New  England,  New  York,  and  Pennsylvania 
fell  in  a  single  year  from  i,33O,ooo/.  to  4OO,ooo/.  Wash- 
ington, when  he  sent  his  annual  order  for  a  supply  of 
European  commodities  to  London,  enjoined  his  corre- 
spondent to  forward  none  of  the  articles  unless  the  offen- 
sive Act  of  Parliament  was  in  the  meantime  repealed. 
Less  scrupulous  patriots  found  reason  to  wish  that  they 
had  followed  his  example.  Mackrabie  relates  how  two 
Philadelphians  had  sent  over  for  a  Cheshire  cheese,  and 
a  hogshead  of  English  Entire  Butt.  "These  delicacies 
happened  unfortunately  to  have  been  shipped  from 
Europe  after  the  Resolutions  on  this  side  had  tran- 
spired, and  in  consequence  the  Committee  took  the 
liberty  to  interfere.  The  purchasers  made  a  gallant 
stand,  but  their  opposition  was  in  vain.  They  cursed 
and  swore,  kicked,  and  cuffed,  and  pulled  noses ;  but 
the  catastrophe  was  that  the  prisoners  were  regaled 
with  the  cheese  and  porter.  They  have  sent  away  a 
ship  loaded  with  malt  to-day.  Nobody  could  either 
buy  or  store  it."  The  phraseology  of  the  movement 
against  taxation  without  representation  appeared  in 
odd  places.  A  mechanic,  whose  shop  had  been  broken 
open,  advertised  a  reward  for  the  apprehension  of  the 
thief,  and  reminded  his  fellow-citizens  how  hard  it  was 
for  a  man  to  part  with  his  own  property  without  his 
own  consent.  It  is  curious  to  note  that  Grenville,  as 
the  father  of  the  Stamp  Act,  till  his  death,  and  long 
after  it,  came  in  for  much  of  the  discredit  which  prop- 
erly belonged  to  Charles  Townshend.  "  I  would  not  as 
a  friend,"  Mackrabie  wrote  from  Philadelphia,  "advise 
Mr.  George  Grenville  to  come  and  pass  a  summer  in 
North  America.  It  might  be  unsafe."  This  was  in 


CHANGE   OF   VENUE  75 


1768.  But  as  late  as  1773  Kdmi^  Bnrkp.T  who,  of  all 
people,  had  been  asked  by  a  friend  in  Virginia  to  send 
him  out  a  clever  lad  accustomed  to  ride  light  weights, 
wrote  to  Lord  Rockingham  :  "  If  poor  George  Grenville 
was  alive,  he  would  not  suffer  English  jockeys  to  be 
entered  outwards  without  bond  and  certificate  :  or  at 
least  he  would  have  them  stamped  or  excised,  to  bear 
the  burdens  of  this  poor  oppressed  country,  and  to  re- 
lieve the  landed  interest."  Ten  years  later  the  poets  of 
Brooks's  Club  were  still  singing  of 

"  Grenville's  fondness  for  Hesperian  gold  ; 
And  Grenville's  friends,  conspicuous  from  afar, 
In  mossy  down  incased,  and  bitter  tar." 

All  the  British  regiments  which  had  ever  sailed  from 
Cork  or  Portsmouth  could  not  force  Americans  to  pur- 
chase British  merchandise.  Nor  was  it  possible  that 
the  presence  of  troops,  under  a  free  constitution  such  as 
Massachusetts  still  enjoyed,  should  do  anything  towards 
the  better  government  of  the  colony,  or  the  solution  of 
the  difficulties  which  had  arisen  between  the  Assembly 
and  the  Crown.  One  function  the  soldiers  might  be 
called  upon  to  discharge  ;  and  it  was  evidently  in  the 
minds  of  the  Cabinet  which  sent  them  out.  As  soon  as 
the  news  of  their  arrival  at  Boston  had  reached  London, 
the  supporters  of  the  Ministry,  in  manifest  concert  with 
the  Treasury  Bench,  moved  an  address  to  the  King 
praying  that  persons  who,  in  the  view  of  the  Governor 
of  Massachusetts,  had  committed,  or  had  failed  to  dis- 
close, acts  of  treason  might  be  brought  over  to  England 
and  tried  under  a  statute  of  Henry  the  Eighth.  The 
Ministers  themselves  moved  Resolutions  framed  with 
the  object  of  indicating  for  the  Governor's  guidance 
that,  in  the  action  which  the  Assembly  of  the  colony 
had  taken,  and  in  the  votes  which  it  had  passed,  treason 
had  already  been  committed. 

Such  a  proposal  was  shocking  to  many  independent 
members  of  Parliament,  and  most  of  all  to  those  who 
knew  by  experience  what  a  serious  matter  a  voyage  from 


76  THE  AMERICAN  DEVOLUTION 

America  was,  even  in  a  case  where  there  would  be  little 
prospect  indeed  of  a  return  journey.  Thomas  Pownall, 
who  had  governed  Massachusetts  strongly  and  discreetly 
during  Pitt's  great  war,  was  earnest  in  his  remon- 
strances ;  and  his  views  were  enforced  by  Captain 
Phipps,  afterwards  Lord  Mul grave,  a  competent  and 
experienced  navigator.  They  commented  forcibly  on 
the  cruelty  and  injustice  of  dragging  an  individual  three 
thousand  miles  from  his  family,  his  friends,  and  his  busi- 
ness, "  from  every  assistance,  countenance,  comfort,  and 
counsel  necessary  to  support  a  man  under  such  trying 
circumstances,"  in  order  that,  with  the  Atlantic  between 
him  and  his  own  witnesses,  he  might  be  put  to  peril  of 
his  life  before  a  panel  of  twelve  Englishmen,  in  no  true 
sense  of  the  word  his  peers.  Of  those  jurymen  the 
accused  colonist  would  not  possess  the  personal  know- 
ledge which  alone  could  enable  him  to  avail  himself  of 
his  right  to  challenge ;  while  they  on  their  side  would 
infallibly  regard  themselves  as  brought  together  to  vin- 
dicate the  law  against  a  criminal  of  whose  guilt  the 
responsible  authorities  were  fully  assured,  but  who 
would  have  been  dishonestly  acquitted  by  a  Boston  jury. 
All  this  was  said  in  the  House  of  Commons,  and  listened 
to  most  unwillingly  by  the  adherents  of  the  Ministry, 
who  after  a  while  drowned  argument  by  clamour.  A 
large  majority  voted  to  establish  what  was,  for  all  intents 
and  purposes,  a  new  tribunal,  to  take  cognisance  of  an 
act  which,  since  it  had  been  committed,  had  been  made 
a  crime  by  an  ex  post  facto  decree.  Parliament  had  done 
this  in  a  single  evening,  without  hearing  a  tittle  of 
evidence,  and,  (after  a  not  very  advanced  stage  in  the 
proceedings,)  without  consenting  to  hear  anything  or 
anybody  at  all.  But  a  House  of  Commons,  which  had 
so  often  dealt  with  Wilkes  and  the  Middlesex  electors, 
had  got  far  beyond  the  point  of  caring  to  maintain  a 
judicial  temper  over  matters  affecting  the  rights,  the 
liberty,  and  now  at  last  the  lives,  of  men.1 

1  The  Government  were  in  a  bad   House  of  Commons  mess.    They 
could  not  produce  a  copy  of  the  alleged  treasonable  Resolution  of  the 


CHANGE   OF   VENUE  77 

That  which  was  the  sport  of  a  night  at  Westminster 
was  something  very  different  to  those  whom  it  most 
concerned  at  Boston.  The  chiefs  of  the  popular  party 
saw  the  full  extent  of  their  danger  in  a  moment.  They 
already  had  done  what  placed  their  fortunes,  and  in  all 
probability  their  very  existence,  at  the  mercy  of  the 
Governor;  and,  whether  the  blow  fell  soon,  or  late,  or 
not  at  all,  their  peace  of  mind  was  gone.  To  poor  men, 
as  most  of  them  were,  transportation  to  England  at  the 
best' meant  ruin.  Their  one  protection,  the  sympathy 
of  their  fellow-citizens,  was  now  powerless  to  save  them. 
Time  was  when  Governor  Bernard  would  "have  thought 
twice  before  he  laid  hands  on  the  leaders  of  public  opin- 
ion in  a  country  where  the  arm  of  authority  was  strong 
only  when  it  had  public  opinion  with  it.  He  was  not 
likely  to  forget  how,  when  the  populace  were  hanging 
the  Boston  stamp  distributer  in  effigy,  the  civil  power 
requested  that  the  Militia  might  be  called  out  by  beat  of 
drum,  and  how  the  colonel  replied  that  his  drummers 
were  in  the  mob.  To  arrest  Samuel  Adams  and  John 
Hancock,  even  with  their  own  concurrence,  by  the  aid 
of  such  peace  officers  as  cared  to  respond  to  a  summons, 
was  in  the  view  of  the  Governor  a  sufficiently  arduous 
undertaking.  And  when  the  time  for  their  deportation 
came,  it  would  have  been  a  more  serious  business  still 
to  march  them,  through  streets  crowded  with  angry 
patriots,  down  to  a  wharf  over  the  edge  of  which  the 
crews  of  half  a  hundred  coasting  vessels  would  have 
tossed  the  constables,  and  the  sheriff  too,  with  as  little 
scruple  as  they  would  have  run  a  cargo  of  sugar  on  a 
dark  night  into  a  creek  of  Rhode  Island.  But  the 
troops  had  come,  and  the  ships  which  had  brought  them 

Massachusetts  Assembly,  on  which  their  own  proposals  were  founded. 
Governor  Pownall,  backed  by  Burke,  denied  that  such  a  Resolution  was 
in  existence.  "The chorus-men,  who  at  proper  times  call  for  the  question, 
helped  them  out  at  this  dead  lift,  by  an  incessant  recitative  of  the  words, 
'Question,  question, question.'  At  length,  at  four  o'clock  in  the  morning, 
the  whole  House  in  confusion  and  laughing,  the  Resolutions  and  addresses 
were  agreed  to."  Such  is  the  account  given,  in  expressive,  but  not  very  offi- 
cial language,  in  the  Parliamentary  History  for  the  26th  of  January,  1 769. 


;8  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

were  never  again  likely  to  be  far  away;  and  that  diffi- 
culty was  a  thing  of  the  past.  With  a  quay  commanded 
by  the  cannon  of  men-of-war,  and  a  harbour  alive  with 
their  armed  boats,  and  with  a  forest  of  bayonets  on 
land,  there  would  be  no  fear  of  a  rescue,  or  even  of  a 
riot.  All  prominent  opponents  of  the  Government  hence- 
forward lived  in  the  knowledge  that  their  fate  was  at 
the  arbitrary  disposal  of  one  whom,  as  an  officer  of  the 
State,  they  had  braved  and  baffled  ;  and  who  insisted  on 
regarding  them,  each  and  all,  as  his  private  enemies. 
The  revival  of  the  old  Tudor  statute,  which  kept  a  hal- 
ter suspended  over  the  neck  of  every  public  man  whom 
the  people  of  Massachusetts  followed  and  trusted,  was 
a  device  as  provocative,  and  in  the  end  proved  to  be  as 
foolish  and  as  futile,  as  the  operation  which  in  the  story 
of  our  great  civil  contest  is  called,  not  very  accurately, 
the  Arrest  of  the  Five  Members. 

From  the  day  that  the  troops  landed  all  chance  of  a 
quiet  life,  for  those  who  valued  it,  was  over  and  done 
with.  John  Adams,  who  was  intent  on  making  a  liveli- 
hood,—  and  who,  to  use  his  own  words,  had  very  little 
connection  with  public  affairs,  and  hoped  to  have  less,— 
observed  with  disapproval  that  endeavours  were  being 
systematically  pursued  "  by  certain  busy  characters  to 
kindle  an  immortal  hatred  between  the  inhabitants  of 
the  lower  class  and  the  soldiers."  But  the  fact  was 
that  every  class,  without  any  prompting  from  above  or 
below,  had  its  own  reasons  for  disliking  the  military 
occupation  of  their  city.  Boston  was  a  non-official 
community,  where  no  man  was  under  orders,  and  where 
every  man  worked  every  day  and  all  day  to  get  his 
bread  by  supplying,  in  one  shape  or  another,  the 
natural  wants  and  requirements  of  the  society  in  which 
he  lived.  But  now  the  whole  place  was  invaded  by 
officialism  in  its  most  uncompromising  and  obtrusive 
form.  For  every  two  civilians  there  was  at  least  one 
wearer  of  a  uniform,  whose  only  occupations  were  to 
draw  his  pay,  to  perform  his  routine  duties,  and  to  obey 


MILITARY  OCCUPATION  OF  BOSTON  79 

some  one  who  was  placed  above  him.  Boston  was 
Whig;  and  the  army,  from  top  to  bottom,  with  few 
exceptions,  was  ultra-Tory.  Charles  Lee,  who  had 
served  with  distinction  up  to  the  rank  of  colonel  in 
a  royal  regiment,  —  and  with  whom  royal  officers 
lived,  and  generally  continued  to  live,  on  free  and  equal 
terms,  —  remembered  an  occasion  when  a  clever  and 
spirited  subaltern  inveighed  against  David  Hume  as  a 
champion  of  divine  right  and  absolute  monarchy.  The 
young  man  was  taken  to  task  by  a  veteran  who  rebuked 
him  for  speaking  with  irreverence  of  Charles  the  First, 
and,  with  more  loyalty  than  logic,  pronounced  that  such 
sentiments  were  indecent  and  ungrateful  in  those  who 
ate  the  King's  bread.1  That  was  the  creed  of  the 
mess-room ;  ominous  enough  in  the  days  of  a  sovereign 
who,  now  that  the  Stuarts  were  no  longer  a  danger  to 
himself,  was  only  too  ready  to  take  them  for  his  model. 

The  social  tone  of  military  circles  was  even  more  un- 
congenial to  the  atmosphere  of  Boston  than  their  politi- 
cal opinions.  That  tone  has  been  changing  for  the  better 
ever  since,  and  never  so  quickly  and  so  steadily  as  dur- 
ing the  period  which  covers  the  career  of  those  who  now 
command  our  brigades.  The  British  officer  of  this  gen- 
eration is  a  picked  man  to  begin  with.  He  enters  the 
army  at  an  age  when  he  has  already  laid  the  ground  of 
a  liberal  education,  and  in  after  life  he  never  misses  an 
opportunity  of  perfecting  his  professional  acquirements. 
In  Indian  and  colonial  service  he  gains  a  large,  and  even 
cosmopolitan,  view  of  affairs  and  men,  while  he  has  always 
present  to  his  mind  the  obligation  to  maintain  the  credit 
of  the  country  abroad  by  his  personal  conduct  and  de- 
meanour. And,  when  employed  at  home,  he  is  accus- 
tomed to  act  with  the  Militia  and  Volunteers  ;  to  take  a 
share  in  the  work  of  their  organisation  and  their  disci- 
pline;  to  recognise  their  merits;  and  to  make  full  allow- 
ance for  deficiences  from  which  citizen  soldiers  can  never 
be  exempt  in  peace,  or  in  the  first  campaign  of  a  war. 

It  was  a  different  story  with  an  officer  whose  lot  was 

1  Memoirs  of  Major-General  Lee  ;  Dublin,  1792:   page  101. 


8o  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

cast  in  the  third  quarter  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
When  on  active  service  in  Germany  every  one,  against 
whom,  or  by  whose  side,  he  fought,  was  a  regular  soldier  ; 
and,  in  the  case  of  our  Prussian  allies,  a  regular  of  the 
regulars.  When  he  returned  to  England,  to  quarters  in 
a  Cathedral  town,  (or,  if  a  guardsman,  to  his  lodging  in 
St.  James's  Street,)  he  moved  in  social  circles  where  no 
single  person  pursued  any  one  of  those  work-a-day  trades 
and  callings  which  in  New  England  ranked  as  high  as 
the  very  best.  With  such  a  training  and  such  associa- 
tions, a  man  who  possessed  no  more  than  the  average 
share  of  good  sense  and  good  feeling  cared  little  for 
colonial  opinion,  whether  civil  or  military,  and  seldom 
went  the  right  way  to  conciliate  it.  Pitt  did  his  utmost 
to  correct  what  was  amiss ;  and,  when  he  could  lay  his 
hand  on  a  general  of  the  right  sort,  he  did  much.  Young 
Lord  Howe,  who  led  the  advance  against  Ticonderoga 
in  1758, — and  who  in  truth,  as  long  as  he  was  alive, 
commanded  the  expedition,  —  tried  hard  to  break  down 
the  barrier  between  the  two  sections  of  his  army  by  pre- 
cept, and  by  his  fine  example.  But  when  he  was  shot 
dead,  skirmishing  with  Israel  Putnam's  Rangers  in  front 
of  his  own  regiment,  the  Fifty-fifth  of  the  line,  he  left  no 
one  behind  him,  south  of  the  St.  Lawrence,  who  had  the 
capacity  or  inclination  to  carry  out  the  great  Minister's 
wise  and  large  policy.  The  relations  of  royal  and  pro- 
vincial officers  became  anything  but  fraternal,  and  the 
rank  and  file  of  the  American  companies  were  only  too 
ready  to  espouse  the  quarrel  of  their  leaders.  American 
colonels,  during  the  Ticonderoga  campaign,  complained 
that  they  were  hardly  ever  summoned  to  a  council  of 
war,  and  that,  until  the  orders  came  out,  they  knew  no 
more  of  what  was  to  be  done  than  the  sergeants.  The 
men  of  an  American  regiment,  which  was  stationed  on 
the  Hudson,  conceived  themselves  affronted  by  an  Eng- 
lish captain,  and  nearly  half  the  corps  disbanded  itself 
and  marched  off  home.  An  English  Quartermaster- 
General,  great  in  nothing  but  oaths,  —  whom  his  own 
Commander-in-Chief  described  as  a  very  odd  man,  with 


MILITARY  OCCUPATION  OF  BOSTON  8 1 

whom  he  was  sorry  to  have  any  concern,  —  was  told  by 
a  Virginian  colonel  that  he  would  rather  break  his  sword 
than  serve  with  him  any  longer.  These  incidents,  when 
brooded  over  in  winter  quarters,  engendered  a  dissatis- 
faction which  found  vent  in  a  heated  newspaper  con- 
troversy between  London  and  Boston. 

Mr.  Parkman,  in  his  fascinating  story  of  "  Montcalm 
and  Wolfe,"  as  elsewhere  throughout  his  writings,  pre- 
serves a  carefully  measured  impartiality  of  praise  and 
blame  towards  English  and  French,  regular  soldiers  and 
colonial  levies,  and  even  Indians ;  though  it  cannot  be 
said  that  these  last  gain,  either  as  men  or  warriors,  by 
an  unvarnished  description.  He  thus  speaks  about  Brit- 
ish officers  :  "  Most  of  them  were  men  of  family,  exceed- 
ingly prejudiced  and  insular,  whose  knowledge  of  the 
world  was  limited  to  certain  classes  of  their  own  country- 
men, and  who  looked  down  on  all  others,  whether  foreign 
or  domestic.  Towards  the  provincials  their  attitude  was 
one  of  tranquil  superiority,  though  its  tranquillity  was 
occasionally  disturbed  by  what  they  regarded  as  absurd 
pretensions  on  the  part  of  the  colony  officers.  The  pro- 
vincial officers,  on  the  other  hand,  and  especially  those 
of  New  England,  being  no  less  narrow  and  prejudiced, 
filled  with  a  sensitive  pride  and  a  jealous  local  patriotism, 
and  bred  up  in  a  lofty  appreciation  of  the  merits  and 
importance  of  their  country,  regarded  British  supercili- 
ousness with  a  resentment  which  their  strong  love  for 
England  could  not  overcome."  1  There  were  faults  on 
both  sides.  But  the  British  officers  had  the  most  to 
give ;  and,  if  they  had  cordially  and  cheerfully  taken 
their  cue  from  spirits  as  finely  touched  as  those  of  Wolfe 
and  Howe,  their  advances  towards  intimacy  with  their 
American  comrades  would  have  been  eagerly  met  and 
their  friendship  warmly  valued. 

If  there  was  so  little  sense  of  fellowship  between  the 
regular  army  and  the  colonists  during  the  Seven  Years' 
War,  when  they  were  serving  together  in  the  field  against 
a  common  adversary,  it  may  well  be  believed  that  in  1772 

1  Parkman's  Montcalm  and  Wolfe,  chapter  xxi. 
VOL.  I.  i    i  '"  G 


82  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

and  1773  things  did  not  go  pleasantly  in  the  streets  of 
Boston.  The  garrison  was  there,  in  order  to  remind  the 
city  that  Britain's  arm  was  long  and  heavy,  and  that  her 
patience  was  exhausted.  It  was  a  situation  without  hope 
from  the  very  first ;  for  it  gave  no  opportunity  for  the 
play  of  kindly  impulses,  and  was  only  too  certain  to 
bring  into  prominence  the  least  estimable  persons  on 
either  side.  There  were  men  of  refinement  and  good 
education  in  the  British  regiments,  and  on  the  staff,  more 
especially  among  those  of  older  standing,  who  would 
gladly  have  employed  their  social  gifts  to  mitigate  the 
asperity  of  politics.  There  were,  as  the  sequel  proved, 
some  of  all  ranks  and  ages  who  had  studied  the  case  of 
the  colonists  closely  enough  to  question  and  condemn 
the  action  of  their  own  Government.  And  there  were 
veterans  who  had  fought  the  enemies  of  their  country 
bravely  all  the  world  over,  without  being  able  to  hate 
them,  and  who  were  still  less  inclined  to  be  harsh  towards 
those  whom  they  regarded  as  her  erring  children.  But 
the  winter  of  discontent  was  so  severe  that  Uncle  Toby 
himself  could  not  have  melted  the  ice  in  a  Boston  par- 
lour. The  men  of  the  popular  party,  and  the  women 
quite  as  rigidly,  set  their  faces  like  flint  against  any  show 
of  civility,  or  the  most  remote  approach  to  familiarity. 
The  best  among  the  officers,  forbidden  by  self-respect  to 
intrude  where  they  were  not  welcome,  retired  into  the 
background,  and  left  the  field  clear  for  the  operations 
of  certain  black-sheep  of  the  mess-room,  whom  the  citi- 
zens, in  the  humour  which  then  prevailed,  came  not 
unnaturally  to  look  upon  as  representatives  of  British 
character  and  conduct. 

That  sort  of  military  man,  as  readers  of  the  English 
classics  know,  appeared  frequently  in  the  dramas  and 
novels  of  the  eighteenth  century ;  where  his  self-suffi- 
ciency and  impertinence  were  unsparingly  castigated, 
although  he  was  sometimes  endowed  with  a  sprightliness 
of  which  in  real  life  little  trace  could  be  found.1  The 

1  Mrs.  Grant  of  Laggan,  who  was  a  strong  Loyalist,  as  a  young  lady  was 
well  acquainted  with  the  officers  quartered  in  a  neighbouring  provincial 


MILITARY  OCCUPATION  OF  BOSTON  83 

recruiting  officer  who  travelled  with  Mr.  Spectator  on  his 
return  from  the  visit  to  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley ;  the  en- 
sign who  insulted  Tom  Jones  ;  the  captain  whom  Rod- 
erick Random  met  in  the  Bath  coach,  —  were  of  a  type 
which  has  now  become  extinct  in  our  army.  But  of  old 
days  that  type  was  much  in  evidence,  as  many  a  quiet 
and  inoffensive  person  everywhere,  but  especially  in  the 
colonies,  knew  to  his  cost.  For,  when  these  gentlemen 
disported  themselves  in  American  society,  they  were  in 
the  habit  of  parading  a  supreme  disdain  for  every  one 
who  did  not  wear  a  uniform.  To  all  such  they  applied 
indiscriminately  the  name  of  "  Mohairs,"  an  epithet 
which  still  rankled  in  the  mind  of  many  a  brave  man 
after  he  had  worn  to  tatters  more  than  one  uniform 
while  fighting  against  the  cause  to  which  the  services  of 
these  reprobates  were  so  great  a  discredit,  and  so  small 
a  gain.1  In  undisturbed  times,  and  in  cities  against 
which  the  Government  that  employed  them  did  not  bear 
a  grudge,  their  contempt  for  civilians  found  expression 
in  acts  of  buffoonery,  the  victims  of  which  were  cautiously 
but  not  always  judiciously  chosen.  A  Philadelphian 
writer  of  the  period  relates  the  feats  of  a  pair  of  officers 
who  made  themselves  notorious  by  a  series  of  practical 
jokes,  marked  with  scanty  fun  and  great  impudence,  and 
directed  against  citizens  of  pacific  appearance  and  occu- 
pations. At  length  the  worst  of  the  two  happened  to 
mistake  his  man,  and  received  a  lesson  which  he  was 
not  likely  soon  to  forget. 

The  nature  of  such  pranks,  when  their  perpetrators 

town.  "The  Royal  Americans,"  she  writes,  "had  been  in  garrison. 
They  were  persons  of  decent  morals  and  a  judicious  and  moderate  way 
of  thinking,  who,  though  they  did  not  court  the  society  of  the  natives, 
expressed  no  contempt  for  their  manners  or  opinion." 

After  a  while  the  place  of  the  Royal  Americans  was  taken  by  another 
battalion.  The  officers  of  the  new  regiment  "  turned  the  plain  burghers 
into  the  highest  ridicule,  and  yet  used  every  artifice  to  get  acquainted 
with  them.  They  wished  to  act  the  part  of  very  fine  gentlemen  ;  and  the 
gay  and  superficial  in  those  days  were  but  too  apt  to  take  for  their  model 
the  fine  gentlemen  of  the  detestable  old  comedies,  which  good  taste  has 
now  very  properly  exploded." 

1  Garden's  Revolutionary  Anecdotes. 

ca 


84  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

were  sober,  gives  some  faint  indication  of  what  they 
permitted  themselves  in  their  hours  of  conviviality  ;  for 
those  were  days  when  to  drink  more  than  was  good 
for  him,  —  or  indeed  more  than  would  have  been  good 
for  himself  and  his  neighbours  on  either  side  of  him,  — 
was  a  duty  which  no  one  could  decline  except  a  man  of 
unusual  resolution,  or  of  a  grade  in  the  army  higher 
than  any  which  these  worthies  were  ever  likely  to  attain. 
Mackrabie,  who  between  1768  and  1770  was  made  much 
at  home  in  the  garrisons  of  America,  was  very  candid 
in  keeping  his  brother-in-law  informed  of  the  price  which 
he  paid  for  the  privilege.  "  We  have  been  most  hos- 
pitably and  genteelly  entertained,"  he  writes  from  Fort 
Pitt,  (as  Fort  Duquesne  had  been  styled  ever  since  it 
fell  into  British  hands,)  "and  allowing  for  the  politesse 
a  la  militaire  which  obliges  us  to  compound  for  being 
un  peu  enivr/s  at  least  once  a  day,  we  pass  our  time 
most  agreeably."  On  the  fourth  of  June  at  New  York 
he  anticipates  that  the  General,  as  a  matter  of  course, 
will  make  all  the  officers  in  the  town  drunk  at  his  house 
in  honour  of  the  King's  birthday.  In  another  letter  he 
gives  a  description  of  serenading,  as  practised  in  Phila- 
delphia. "  The  manner  is  as  follows.  We  with  four  or 
five  young  officers  of  the  regiment  in  barracks  drink  as 
hard  as  we  can,  to  keep  out  the  cold,  and  about  mid- 
night sally  forth,  attended  by  the  band, —  horns,  clarinets, 
hautboys,  and  bassoons,  —  march  through  the  streets, 
and  play  under  the  window  of  any  lady  you  choose  to 
distinguish,  which  they  esteem  a  high  compliment." 
In  1770,  when  feeling  was  already  so  hot  that  a  good 
Englishman  should  have  been  careful  to  evince  his 
loyalty  to  the  King  by  courtesy  and  forbearance  tow- 
ards the  King's  subjects,  he  was  invited  to  join  in 
celebrating  St.  George's  Day  at  a  banquet  attended  by 
all  the  native-born  Englishmen  in  the  city.  "We  should 
have  had,"  he  writes,  "  the  Governor  at  our  head,  but 
that  the  party  was  only  proposed  two  days  before. 
However,  we  met  at  a  tavern,  stuffed  roast  beef  and 
plum  pudding,  and  got  drunk,  pour  rhonneur  de  St. 


MILITARY  OCCUPATION  OF  BOSTON  85 

George ;  wore  crosses,  and  finished  the  evening  at  the 
play-house,  where  we  made  the  people  all  chorus  '  God 
save  the  King,'  and  '  Rule  Britannia,'  and  '  Britons  strike 
home,'  and  such  like  nonsense,  and,  in  short,  conducted 
ourselves  with  all  the  decency  and  confusion  usual  on 
such  occasions."  J 

Those  manners,  unrebuked  and  even  tacitly  encour- 
aged in  high  military  quarters,  were  not  likely  to  win 
back  the  affections  of  a  community  which  still  walked 
in  the  footsteps  of  its  early  founders.  Mr.  Thomas 
Hollis,  —  a  learned  English  antiquary,  and  an  enterpris- 
ing art-collector,  who  met  with  the  success  which  falls 
to  him  who  is  early  in  that  field,  —  had  been  a  munificent 
benefactor  to  American  colleges,  and  most  of  all  to  Har- 
vard. He  maintained  with  the  leading  scholars  and 
divines  of  America  very  close  relations  of  friendship,  of 
good  offices,  and,  (whenever  the  opportunity  offered  it- 
self,) of  hospitality.  Indeed,  his  position  in  reference  to 
New  England  was  very  much  that  of  the  Proxenus  of 
a  foreign  State  in  the  cities  of  ancient  Greece.  He 
knew  the  colonists  of  old ;  and,  if  the  Ministry  had  con- 
sulted him,  he  could  have  put  them  into  communication 
with  informants  and  advisers  of  a  higher  stamp  than 
the  broken-down  office-holders  and  subsidised  news- 
writers  who  were  their  confidential  correspondents  across 
the  ocean.  "  The  people  of  Boston  and  Massachusetts 
Bay,"  so  Hollis  wrote  within  a  month  of  the  day  that 
the  troops  sailed  for  America,  "are,  I  suppose,  take 
them  as  a  body,  the  soberest,  most  knowing,  virtuous 
people  at  this  time  upon  earth.  All  of  them  hold  Revo- 
lution principles,  and  were  to  a  man,  till  disgusted  by 
the  Stamp  Act,  the  staunchest  friends  to  the  house  of 
Hanover."  There  was  a  seriousness,  he  went  on  to 
say,  in  their  conversation  and  deportment  which  in  the 
more  ribald  public  prints  had  obtained  for  them  the 
appellation  of  Boston  Saints  ;  and,  like  the  saints  of  old, 
they  now  had  a  taste  of  persecution.  Although  physical 

1  Mackrabie  to  Francis,  Fort  Pitt,  I4th  July,  1770  ;  New  York,  4th  June 
1768  ;  Philadelphia,  gth  March,  1768  ;  Philadelphia,  24th  April,  1770. 


86  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

cruelty  was  absent,  they  endured  something  of  martyr- 
dom in  the  moral  repugnance  created  by  the  license  and 
the  rioting  with  which  their  much-enduring  town  was 
thenceforward  flooded.  It  is  not  difficult  to  imagine  the 
feelings  of  a  quiet  family,  who  had  never  heard  music 
outside  the  church  of  their  own  denomination,  when  they 
were  treated  to  a  military  serenade  after  the  style  of 
Philadelphia ;  knowing  only  too  well  that,  if  the  ladies 
of  the  house  were  suspected  by  their  Whig  neighbours 
of  liking  the  entertainment,  they  might  wake  up  some 
morning  to  find  their  front  door  tarred  and  feathered. 

For  they  were  not  all  saints  in  Boston.  In  the  alleys 
which  ran  down  to  the  water-side  there  were  as  rough 
men  of  their  hands  as  in  any  seaport  in  the  world ; 
ardent  patriots  all  of  them,  (with  the  exception  of  a  very 
few  who  took  excellent  care  to  keep  their  sentiments  to 
themselves,)  and  vigilant  censors  and  guardians,  after 
their  own  fashion,  of  the  patriotism  of  others.  Unfor- 
tunately these  were  the  inhabitants  of  Boston  who  came 
most  closely  and  frequently  in  contact  with  the  rank 
and  file  of  the  British  army.  It  was  a  pity  that  there 
should  have  been  so  deep  and  impassable  a  gulf  of  mis- 
understanding between  two  sets  of  people  who  had 
much  in  common,  whose  interests  were  in  no  point  ad- 
verse, and  whose  attitude  of  reciprocal  enmity  was  im- 
posed upon  them  from  above.  None  who  are  widely 
read  in  military  memoirs,  —  and  there  is  no  nation  more 
rich  in  the  journals  of  privates  and  non-commissioned 
officers  than  our  own,  —  can  doubt  that  the  men  of  Min- 
den,  like  the  men  of  Talavera  and  Salamanca,  were  as 
honest,  humane,  and  (under  the  ordinary  temptations 
and  trials  of  military  life)  as  well-conducted  soldiers  as 
ever  carried  a  sick  comrade's  knapsack  or  shared  their 
rations  with  a  starving  peasant.  But  they  knew  very 
well  that  their  presence  in  Boston  was  not  meant  as  a 
delicate  attention  to  the  city,  and  that  to  make  them- 
selves disagreeable  to  its  citizens  was  part  of  the  un- 
written order  of  the  day.  Any  compunction  that  they 
might  have  harboured  was  soon  extinguished  by  the 


MILITARY  OCCUPATION  OF  BOSTON  8? 

inexorable  hostility  which  met  them  at  every  step,  and 
hemmed  them  in  from  every  quarter.  If  they  had  been 
a  legion  of  angels  under  Gabriel  and  Michael  they  would 
have  been  just  as  much,  and  as  little,  beloved  in  Fish 
Street,  or  in  Battery  Marsh.  Their  good  qualities  were 
denied  or  travestied,  their  faults  spied  out  and  magni- 
fied. Men  who  during  Pitt's  war  never  tired  of  stand- 
ing treat  with  soldiers,  now  talked  of  them  as  idle 
drunkards.  If  they  civilly  passed  the  time  of  day  to  a 
woman,  she  drew  herself  aside  with  a  shudder.  The 
very  colour  of  the  cloth  in  which,  in  order  that  America 
might  be  safe  and  great,  Englishmen  had  struggled 
through  the  surf  at  Louisburg,  and  clambered  up  the 
heights  of  Abraham,  was  made  for  them  a  by-word  and 
a  reproach.  No  single  circumstance  was  employed 
with  such  great  injustice,  but  so  much  effect,  to  excite 
disgust  and  derision  as  one  condition  in  their  professional 
existence  which,  poor  fellows,  was  no  fault  of  theirs. 
The  custom  of  flogging,  (and  that  punishment,  in  the 
case  of  a  heavy  sentence,  might  well  mean  death  by  the 
most  horrible  of  tortures,)  revolted,  sometimes  beyond 
all  power  of  repression,  the  humanity  of  the  populations 
among  whom  our  troops  were  quartered,  and  of  the  allies 
with  whom  they  served.  This  feeling  was  strong  in 
America,  where  the  sense  of  personal  dignity  and  invio- 
lability was  more  deeply  rooted  than  in  Europe ;  and  it 
found  expression  in  a  savage  nickname  which,  as  the 
event  showed,  a  man  with  a  loaded  musket  in  his  hand, 
all  the  more  because  he  was  respectable,  might  find 
himself  unable  tamely  to  endure.1 

1  During  the  later  period  of  the  war  a  young  colonist,  hardly  more  than 
a  boy,  deserted  from  Colonel  Tarleton's  corps  in  the  royal  army.  He  was 
sentenced  to  a  thousand  lashes,  and  died  under  them.  On  one  occasion 
an  American  sentinel  saw  a  red  coat  on  the  opposite  bank  of  a  river,  and 
gave  the  alarm.  On  closer  inspection  it  was  discovered  to  be  the  cast-off 
uniform  of  a  British  soldier,  who  had  been  flogged  with  such  severity  that 
"  his  lacerated  back  would  admit  of  no  covering." 

The  shock  to  the  popular  sentiment  became  more  intense,  as  time  went 
on,  both  at  home  and  on  the  Continent.  During  the  war  with  Napoleon 
a  battalion  which  had  suffered  terribly  from  illness  in  the  West  Indies,  and 
was  going  out  to  suffer  terribly  at  Walcheren,  was  quartered  at  Ripon  in 


88  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

Boston,  through  its  constituted  authorities,  met  the 
invasion  with  passive,  but  most  effective  and  irritating, 
resistance.  The  Colonels  called  upon  the  Council  to 
house  and  feed  their  men.  They  were  reminded  that 
under  the  statute  the  city  was  not  bound  to  provide 
quarters  or  supplies  until  the  barracks  in  the  Castle 
were  full;  and  the  Council  and  the  Colonels  alike  knew 
that  the  regiments  had  been  sent,  not  to  defend  the 
Castle,  (which  stood  on  an  island  in  the  Bay,)  but  to 
occupy  and  annoy  the  city.  General  Gage,  the  Com- 
mander-in-Chief  in  America,  came  on  from  New  York 
to  find  his  soldiers  sleeping  in  tents  on  the  Common, 
with  a  New  England  winter  rapidly  approaching.  He 
tried  his  best  to  insist  that  billets  should  be  found  for 
them ;  but  the  law  was  against  him,  in  a  country  where, 
as  he  sulkily  remarked,  the  law  was  studied  by  every- 
body. There  was  nothing  for  it  but  to  hire  private 
houses  at  exorbitant  rates,  and  supply  the  wants  of  the 
troops  through  the  agency  of  the  Commissariat,  and  at 
the  expense  of  the  British  Treasury. 

The  soldiers  were  now  in  the  heart  of  the  town,  with 
nothing  to  do  except  to  clean  their  accoutrements ;  to 
mount  guard  in  public  places  which,  before  they  came, 
had  been  as  peaceful  as  Berkeley  Square ;  and  to  pick 
quarrels  with  the  townsmen,  who  on  their  side  were  not 
slow  to  take  up  the  challenge.  Every  man  fought  his 

Yorkshire.  A  soldier  was  severely  flogged.  Several  of  his  comrades  fainted 
in  the  ranks  ;  and  the  inhabitants,  who  had  with  difficulty  been  restrained 
by  a  cordon  of  sentries  from  rushing  in  upon  the  scene  of  execution,  pelted 
the  regiment  on  the  way  back  to  barracks.  After  Salamanca,  as  an  episode 
of  our  triumphal  entry  into  Madrid,  a  culprit  received  eight  hundred  lashes, 
inflicted  by  the  strongest  drummers  and  buglers  in  the  brigade.  The  peo- 
ple of  the  city  crowded  about  the  sufferer,  and  would  have  loaded  him  with 
money  if  he  had  been  allowed  to  take  it.  A  German  rifleman  in  the  Brit- 
ish service  has  left  an  account  of  the  operations  near  Alicante  in  1813. 
"The  inhabitants,"  he  says,  "had  never  had  an  opportunity  of  witnessing 
an  English  military  punishment,  and  the  flogging  of  an  artilleryman  made 
a  considerable  impression  on  them.  They  cut  down  the  fig-tree  to  which 
he  had  been  tied,  and  even  grubbed  up  the  roots."  American  Anecdotes, 
vol.  i.,  pp.  74  and  399.  The  Vicissitudes  of  a  Soldier's  Life,  by  John  Green, 
late  of  the  68th  Durham  Light  Infantry,  chapters  ii.  and  x.  Adventures  of 
a  Young  Rifleman ;  London,  1826  ;  chapter  viii. 


MILITARY  OCCUPATION  OF  BOSTON  89 

hardest  with  the  weapons  which  were  most  familiar  to 
him.  Samuel  Adams  argued,  in  a  series  of  published 
letters,  thaTlt^as  Illegal  in  time  of  peace,  without  the 
consent  of  Parliament,  to  keep  up  a  standing  army ; 
and  that  Americans,  who  were  not  represented  in  Parlia- 
ment, were  therefore  suffering  under  a  military  tyranny. 
British  officers  spoke  and  wrote  their  minds  about  the 
treatment  to  which  they  had  been  subjected  in  conse- 
quence of  the  hostility  of  the  citizens ;  and  the  Grand 
Jury  found  bills  against  them  for  slandering  the  city  of 
Boston.  A  captain,  who  bade  his  men  remember,  if  a 
hand  were  laid  on  them,  that  they  wore  side-arms,  and 
that  side-arms  were  meant  for  use,  was  called  upon  to 
answer  before  the  tribunals  for  the  words  which  he  had 
uttered.  Humbler  and  ruder  people  in  either  camp  fol- 
lowed the  lead  of  their  superiors ;  and  during  eighteen 
months  insult  and  provocation  were  rife  in  the  air,  and 
the  street  was  seldom  free,  for  long  together,  from  rough 
play  which  at  any  moment  might  turn  into  bloody  work. 
On  the  evening  of  the  5th  of  March,  1770,  there  came 
a  short  and  sharp  encounter  between  a  handful  of  sol- 
diers and  a  small  crowd,  voluble  in  abuse,  and  too  free 
with  clubs  and  snowballs.  There  was  a  sputter  of  mus- 
ketry, and  five  or  six  civilians  dropped  down  deader  dying. 
That  was  the  Boston  massacre.  The  number  of  killed 
was  the  same  as,  half  a  century  afterwards,  fell  in  St. 
Peter's  Fields  at  Manchester.  It  was  not  less  certain 
that  American  Independence  must  result  from  the  one 
catastrophe  than  that  English  Parliamentary  Reform 
would  result  from  the  other ;  and  in  each  case  the  in- 
evitable consequence  took  just  the  same  period  of  time 
to  become  an  accomplished  fact  of  history. 

It  would  be  as  idle  to  apportion  the  shares  of  blame 
among  the  immediate  actors  in  the  miserable  business  as 
to  speculate  on  the  amount  of  the  responsibility  for  an 
explosion  which  attached  itself  to  an  artilleryman  whose 
officer  had  sent  him  into  a  magazine  to  fill  cartridges 
by  the  light  of  an  open  candle.  Of  the  high  parties 
concerned,  the  popular  leaders  hastened  to  put  them- 


90  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

selves  in  the  right,  and  to  prove  that  the  extemporised 
statesmanship  of  plain  folk  might  be  better  than  any- 
thing which  Privy  Councillors,  and  Lord  Chancellors 
present  and  expectant,  had  to  show.  Their  first  care 
was  to  get  the  soldiers  out  of  the  town ;  and  for  this 
humane  and  public-spirited  object  they  availed  them- 
selves deftly,  and  most  justifiably,  of  the  apprehension 
aroused  in  the  minds  of  the  British  authorities  by  an 
outburst  of  wrath  such  as  no  American  city  had  hitherto 
witnessed.  All  that  night  the  drums  were  rolling,  and 
the  bells  clashing,  and  the  streets  resounding  with  the 
cry  of  "  Town-born,  turn  out,  turn  out !  "  The  popula- 
tion was  on  foot,  armed  and  angry ;  and  no  one  went 
home  to  bed  until  the  troops  had  been  ordered  back  to 
barracks,  and  the  captain  who  had  commanded  the  party 
of  soldiers  in  the  fatal  affray  was  in  custody  of  the  Sher- 
iff, and  under  examination  before  the  magistrates.  Next 
morning  there  was  a  public  meeting,  attended  by  almost 
every  able-bodied  man  in  Boston,  and  by  the  first  comers 
of  the  multitudes  which  all  day  long  streamed  in  from 
the  surrounding  country.  There  was  no  bloodshed,  no 
outrage,  no  violence  even  of  language.  After  a  prayer 
for  the  divine  blessing,  at  which  any  opponent  who 
liked  was  at  liberty  to  laugh,  a  committee  of  citizens 
was  gravely  chosen,  and  charged  with  the  duty  of  pro- 
viding, according  to  the  best  of  their  judgement,  for  the 
common  safety.  Samuel  Adams,  Warren,  and  Hancock, 
with  their  colleagues,  on  the  one  side,  and  the  Lieutenant- 
Governor  surrounded  by  his  Council  and  the  chief  officers 
of  the  Army  and  Navy  on  the  other,  talked  it  out  through 
the  livelong  day.  There  were  adjournments  for  the  pur- 
pose of  affording  the  representatives  of  the  Crown  an 
opportunity  to  confer  privately  among  themselves,  and 
of  enabling  the  delegates  to  make  their  report  to  the 
people,  who  sate  in  continuous  session,  or  stood  over 
the  whole  space  between  their  own  hall  of  meeting  and 
the  State-house  in  vast  and  ever-increasing  numbers.  It 
was  a  hard  tussle ;  but  fresh  arguments,  which  required 
no  marshalling  or  commenting,  were  coming  in  from 


MILITARY  OCCUPATION  OF  BOSTON  91 

the  neighbouring  townships  by  hundreds  every  hour. 
The  ominous  prospect  of  the  night,  which  was  likely 
to  follow  such  a  day,  clenched  the  discussion ;  and  just 
before  dark  a  promise  was  given  that  the  whole  military 
force  should  be  removed  to  the  Castle,  and  three  miles 
of  salt  water  should  be  placed  between  the  troops  and 
the  townspeople. 

Danger  to  public  peace  was  for  the  moment  averted ; 
but   there  still  remained  a  matter  which   touched   the  . 
public  reputation.     The  soldiers  who   had   pulled   the  I 
triggers  were  to  be  tried  for  their  lives ;  and  Captain  | 
Preston,  who  had  ordered  them  to  fire  without  the  sanc- 
tion of  a  civil  magistrate,  would  have  been  in  peril  even 
if  local  opinion  had  been  neutral  or  quiescent.     Moved 
by  a  happy  inspiration,  he  applied  to  John  Adams  and 
Josiah    Quincy  to  defend    him.     Quincy  was  a  young 
man,  eloquent  for  liberty,  who  hacr~*begun   to   play  a 
great  part  when  his  career  was  cut  short  by  death  at 
the  exact  point  when  the  war  of  words  passed  into  the 
war  of   bullets.1     His  father,  whom   he  loved  and  re- 
spected, wrote  to  dissuade  him  from  accepting  the  brief,  \ 
in  terms  of  vehement  remonstrance.     The  reply,  it  has   \ 
been  truly  said,  was  in  the  vein  which  sometimes  raises 
the  early  annals  of  the  American  Revolution  above  the  i 
ordinary  level  of  history.     "To  inquire  my  duty,"  the 
son  wrote,  "and  to  do  it,  is  my  aim.     I  dare  affirm  that 
you  and  this  whole  people  will  one  day  rejoice  that  I 
became  an  advocate  for  the  aforesaid  criminals,  charged 
with  the  murder  of  our  fellow-citizens."     Adams,  some  , 
years  the  older,  and  with  more  to  lose,  had  fhe  watchful 
and  jealous  eyes  of  an  exasperated  people  fixed  on  him 
with  concentrated  intensity.     Long  afterwards,  at   the  1 
age  of  eighty-two,  he  wrote  in  answer  to  the  inquiry  of 
a  friend  :  "  Nothing  but  want  of  interest  and  patronage 
prevented  me  from  enlisting  in  the  army.     Could  I  have 
obtained  a  troop  of  horse  or  a  company  of  foot,  I  should 
infallibly  have  been  a  soldier.     It  is  a  problem  in  my 

1  Adams  heard  the  news  of  Josiah  Quincy's  death  on  the  joth  April, 
1775,  eleven  days  after  Lexington. 


92  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

mind,  to  this  day,  whether  I  should  have  been  a  coward 
or  a  hero."  As  far  as  physical  danger  went  he  showed, 
on  more  than  one  occasion,  that  he  could  not  resist  the 
temptation  of  a  fight  even  at  times  when  his  first  duty 
towards  his  country  was  to  keep  himself  alive  and  whole. 
And  as  regards  moral  courage,  no  finer  proof  was  ever 
given  than  when  he  undertook  the  defence  of  Captain 
Preston,  and  secured  a  verdict  of  acquittal  by  the  exer- 
cise of  an  enormous  industry  and  the  display  of  splendid 
ability.1 

A  trial  so  conducted,  and  with  such  a  result,  was  a 
graceful  and  a  loyal  act  on  the  part  of  the  colony ;  and 
the  mother-country  should  not  have  been  behindhand 
to  meet  it  in  the  same  spirit.  The  moment  was  emi- 
nently favourable  for  an  entire  and  permanent  recon- 
ciliation. On  the  very  day  that  the  shots  were  fired  at 
Boston,  Lord  North,  as  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer, 
rose  in  the  House  of  Commons  to  move  the  repeal  of 
the  duties  levied  in  America  under  Charles  Townshend's 
Act,  with  the  solitary  exception  of  the  duty  upon  tea. 
The  maintenance  of  that  impost  had  caused  a  division  of 
opinion  in  the  Cabinet,  as  acute  and  defined  as  ever  took 
place  without  then  and  there  breaking  up  a  Ministry. 
The  Duke  of  Grafton,  who  still  was  the  titular  Head  of 
the  Government,  had  only  just  arrived  at  the  age  when 
the  modern  world  begins  to  look  for  political  discretion 
in  a  public  man.  His  fatal  luck  had  made  him  Prime 
Minister  at  thirty,  with  the  training  of  a  London  rake ; 
and  he  was  married  most  unhappily,  though  not  worse 
than  he  at  the  time  deserved.  He  had  been  a  novice  in 
statecraft  under  a  royal  master  who  had  a  policy,  while  he 
himself  had  none.  For  the  crown  of  his  misfortune,  his 

1  John  Adams  was  very  poorly  repaid  either  by  his  professional  gains,  or 
in  the  shape  of  gratitude  from  the  Royalist  party.  "  Nineteen  guineas,"  he 
wrote,  "  were  all  the  fees  I  ever  received  for  a  whole  year  of  distressing 
anxiety,  and  for  thirteen  or  fourteen  days  of  the  hardest  labour  in  the 
trials  that  I  ever  \ver  ^  through.  Add  to  all  this  the  taunts,  and  scoffs, 
and  bitter  reproache-  of  the  Whigs  ;  and  the  giggling  and  tittering  of  the 
Tories,  which  was  n  jre  provoking  than  all  the  rest." 


93 

faults  and  follies  were  denounced  to  his  contemporaries, 
and  blazoned  forth  for  the  wonder  of  posterity,  by  two 
past  masters  in  the  art  of  invective.  Grafton's  critic  in 
Parliament  was  Edmund  Burke,  the  greatest  man  of 
letters  who  has  given  all  his  best  literary  powers  to 
politics.  And  in  the  public  press  he  was  assailed  by 
Junius,  as  keen  a  politician  as  ever  employed  literature 
for  the  instrument  of  his  righteous  indignation. 

The  lesson  was  sharp.  Grafton  had  taken  it  to 
heart,  and  was  now  intent  on  shaking  off  his  old  self, 
and  doing  what  he  could  to  redeem  his  unhappy  past. 
His  reputation  in  the  eyes  of  history  was  already  beyond 
mending.  Burke  and  Junius  had  seen  to  that.  But  it 
was  open  for  him  to  clear  his  conscience ;  and  he  now 
took  the  first  step  towards  that  end,  the  importance  of 
which  he  was  man  enough  to  estimate  at  its  true  value. 
He  earnestly  recommended  the  Cabinet  to  sacrifice  a 
trumpery  tax  which  brought  into  the  Treasury  a  net 
yearly  income  of  three  hundred  pounds.  The  retention 
of  it  cost  the  country,  directly,  at  least  five  thousand  times 
as  much  money  on  account  of  the  refusal  on  the  part  of 
the  colonies  to  purchase  British  products  ;  and  indirectly, 

—  in  the  shape  of  distrust  and  ill-will,  scandals  and  dis- 
turbances, military  preparations  and  national  dangers, 

—  an  account  was  being  run  up  on  the  wrong  side  of  the 
ledger,  the  ultimate  total  of  which  no  man  could  calculate. 
He  was  supported   by  every  member   of   the   Cabinet 
whose  character  stood   high,  or  who   had   served  with 
distinction  in  civil  life,  in  the  field,  or  on  deep  water. 
Lord  Camden  was  with  Grafton ;  and  so  were  General 
Conway  and  Lord  Granby.     The  famous  admiral,  Sir 
Edward    Hawke,    kept   away  by  illness,   would   other- 
wise have  voted  on  the  same  side.     Against  him  were 
the  Lords  Rochford,  and  Gower,  and  Weymouth,  and 
Hillsborough,  —  a  list  of  personages  who,  (except  that 
some  of  them  were  noted  as  hard-livers  in  a  generation 
when  such  pre-eminence  was  not  easily  achieved,)  have 
been  preserved  from  oblivion  by  the  mischief  which  on 
this  unique  occasion  they  had  the  opportunity  of  doing. 


94  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

Shelburne  had  already  been  driven  from  the  Ministry, 
or  Grafton  would  have  carried  the  day ;  but  the  casting 
vote  now  lay  with  the  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer,  and 
he  gave  his  voice  for  retaining  the  tax  out  of  deference 
to  the  King,  and  against  his  own  view  of  his  own  duty. 

George  the  Third  had  dictated  North's  line  of  action ; 
but  North  had  to  explain  it  himself  in  Parliament.  On 
the  necessity  of  reconciling  America  he  spoke  cogently, 
and  with  a  depth  of  feeling  which  impressed  his  audi- 
ence. Then  he  approached  the  ungracious  part  of  his 
task,  and  defended  the  continuation  of  the  Tea-duty 
perfunctorily,  and  far  from  persuasively.  Conway  ar- 
gued for  the  repeal  of  the  entire  Act,  as  did  Barr6  and 
Sir  William  Meredith.  All  men  of  sense  were  united 
in  thinking  that  it  was  the  occasion  for  a  complete  and 
final  settlement,  and  not  for  a  compromise.  George 
Grenville  exposed,  in  trenchant  terms,  the  folly  and  in- 
consequence of  a  course  for  which,  though  he  was  re- 
garded on  both  sides  of  the  ocean  as  the  apostle  of 
colonial  taxation,  he  flatly  refused  to  stultify  himself  by 
voting.  At  one  moment  it  looked  as  if  the  House  of 
Commons  would  take  the  matter  into  its  own  hands, 
and  would  inflict  on  the  Ministers  a  defeat  most  accept- 
able to  all  members  of  the  government  who  had  any 
notion  how  to  govern ;  but,  when  the  division  came,  the 
Tea-duty  was  retained  by  a  majority  of  sixty-two.  The 
King's  Friends  had  been  duly  warned,  and  primed,  and 
mustered  to  do  the  King's  work ;  and  never  did  they 
more  richly  earn  the  unanimity  of  condemnation  which 
has  been  awarded  to  them  by  historians  whose  verdict 
has  weight  and  whose  names  are  held  in  honour. 

The  concession  was  partial  and  grudging ;  but  the 
good  effect  which,  even  so,  it  produced  showed  that  a 
frank  and  unstinted  renunciation  of  claims  which  were 
hateful  to  America,  and  worse  than  unprofitable  to  Eng- 
land, would  have  reunited  the  two  countries  in  sincere 
and  lasting  friendship.  New  York,  which  had  observed 
her  engagement  to  exclude  British  goods  more  faithfully 
than  any  other  colony,  and  whose  trade  had  suffered  in 


TRADE  AND  REVENUE  95 

proportion,  now  withdrew  from  the  agreement,  and 
sent  orders  home  for  all  sorts  of  merchandise,  except 
tea.  On  New  Year's  day,  1771,  Dr.  Cooper  wrote  to 
Franklin  from  Boston :  "  You  will  hear,  before  this 
reaches  you,  of  the  acquittal  of  Captain  Preston  and  the 
soldiers  concerned  in  the  action  of  the  5th  of  March. 
Instead  of  meeting  with  any  unfair  or  harsh  treatment, 
they  had  every  advantage  that  could  possibly  be  given 
them  in  a  court  of  justice.  The  agreement  of  the  mer- 
chants is  broken.  Administration  has  a  fair  opportu- 
nity of  adopting  the  mildest  and  most  prudent  measures 
respecting  the  colonies,  without  the  appearance  of  being 
threatened  and  drove."  At  home  the  Ministry  would 
have  been  cordially  supported  in  a  policy  of  indulgence 
and  consideration  by  the  commercial  men  of  the  entire 
Kingdom  ;  and  with  good  reason ;  for  the  very  best 
which  possibly  could  be  done  for  British  commerce  was 
to  leave  well  alone.  Jealousy  of  America  was  the  senti- 
ment of  politicians  who  thought  that  they  understood 
trade  better  than  the  traders  themselves,  and  was  not 
shared  by  men  who  knew  business  from  the  inside,  and 
who  lived  by  the  pursuit  of  it.  Burke  was  a  man  of  t 
business  in  every  respect,  except  that  he  applied  his  s 
knowledge  and  insight  to  the  profit  of  the  nation  instead 
of  his  own.  It  had  been  finely  said  that  he  worked  as 
hard  and  as  continuously  at  commercial  questions  as  if 
he  was  to  receive  a  handsome  percentage  on  the  com- 1 
merce  of  the  whole  Empire.  He  now  replied,  with  ' 
crushing  force,  to  the  chief  of  the  amateur  economists 
whose  happiness  was  poisoned  by  the  fear  of  American 
competition.1  "  He  tells  us  that  their  seas  are  covered 
with  ships,  and  their  rivers  floating  with  commerce. 

1  Observations  on  a  late  publication  intitled  "  The  Present  State  of  the 
Nation"  1 769.  The  motto  to  Burke's  pamphlet,  taken  from  Ennius,  was 
happily  chosen. 

"  O  Tite,  si  quid  ego  adjuvero,  curamque  levasso, 
Quse  nunc  te  coquit,  et  versat  sub  pectore  fixa, 
Ecquid  erit  pretii?" 

Titus  was  Mr.  George  Grenville. 


96  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

This  is  true ;  but  it  is  with  our  ships  that  the  seas  are 
covered,  and  their  rivers  float  with  British  commerce. 
The  American  merchants  are  our  factors  ;  all,  in  reality  ; 
most,  even  in  name."  According  to  Burke,  the  Ameri- 
cans traded,  navigated,  and  cultivated  with  English  cap- 
ital, working  for  the  profit  of  Englishmen,  and  taking 
nothing  for  themselves,  "  except  the  peculium,  without 
which  even  slaves  will  not  labour." 

In  the  production  and  fabrication  of  goods  it  was  not 
a  question  of  rivalry,  but  of  a  practical  monopoly  for 
British  mills  and  foundries  which  nothing  could  break 
down  ;  unless  the  meddling  of  British  public  men  should 
irritate  the  colonists  into  taking  measures  to  supply 
their  own  wants  by  their  own  industry.  The  colonies, 
according  to  Franklin,  possessed  no  manufactures  of 
any  consequence.  "  In  Massachusetts  a  little  coarse 
woollen  only,  made  in  families  for  their  own  wear. 
Glass  and  linen  have  been  tried,  and  failed.  Rhode 
Island,  Connecticut,  and  New  York  much  the  same. 
Pennsylvania  has  tried  a  linen  manufactory,  but  it  is 
dropped,  it  being  imported  cheaper.  There  is  a  glass 
house  in  Lancaster  County,  but  it  makes  only  a  little 
coarse  ware  for  the  country  neighbours.  Maryland  is 
clothed  all  with  English  manufactures.  Virginia  the 
same,  except  that  in  their  families  they  spin  a.  little  cot- 
ton of  their  own  growing.  South  Carolina  and  Georgia 
none.  All  speak  of  the  dearness  of  labour,  that  makes 
manufactures  impracticable."  That  was  the  state  of 
things  before  the  non-importation  agreement.  After  it 
had  been  in  force  a  year,  a  single  town  in  Massachu- 
setts had  made  eighty  thousand  pairs  of  women's  shoes, 
and  was  sending  them  to  the  Southern  colonies,  and  even 
to  the  West  Indies.1  Franklin  never  wearied  of  preach- 
ing that  advantageous  circumstances  will  always  secure 
and  locate  manufactures,  so  long  as  things  are  allowed 
to  take  and  keep  their  natural  course.  "  Sheffield,"  he 
exclaimed,  "  against  all  Europe  these  hundred  years 
past ! "  And  it  would  have  been  Sheffield,  and  Man- 

1  Franklin  Correspondence  ;  March  13,  1768,  and  August  3,  1769. 


TRADE  AND  REVENUE  97 

Chester,  and  Burslem,  and  Birmingham  against  all 
Europe,  and  against  all  America  too,  long  enough  for 
every  living  manufacturer,  who  had  his  wits  about  him, 
to  make  his  fortune,  if  only  George  the  Third  and  his 
Ministers  had  known  when  and  where  it  was  wise  to  do 
nothing.  The  satisfaction  with  which  Englishmen,  who 
had  a  business  connection  with  America,  regarded  a  sit- 
uation which,  as  far  as  their  own  interests  were  con- 
cerned, nothing  could  improve,  was  clearly  indicated  by 
the  dead  silence  into  which,  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic, 
the  American  controversy  had  fallen.  During  the  whole 
of  1771,  and  the  two  following  years,  no  debate  on  any 
matter  connected  with  that  question  is  reported  in  the 
Parliamentary  History  of  England.1  The  Historical 
Summary  in  the  "Annual  Register"  for  1773  gives  to 
America  less  than  a  single  column  of  printed  matter. 
In  the  Historical  Summary  for  1775  American  affairs 
fill  a  hundred  and  forty-two  out  of  a  hundred  and  fifty- 
eight  pages. 

It  was  not  otherwise  beyond  the  water.  The  colonies 
generally  acquiesced  in  an  arrangement  under  which 
they  enjoyed  present  tranquillity,  even  though  it  was 
founded  on  the  admission  of  a  principle  containing  the 
germ  of  future  discord.  New  England  was  no  exception. 
"The  people,"  wrote  Mr.  Johnson  of  Connecticut,  a 
trustworthy  and  cool-headed  servant  of  the  public, 
"  appear  to  be  weary  of  their  altercations  with  the 
mother-country.  A  little  discreet  conduct  on  both  sides 
would  perfectly  re-establish  that  warm  affection  and  re- 
spect towards  Great  Britain  for  which  this  country  was 
once  so  remarkable."  Even  with  regard  to  Massa- 
chusetts the  Governor,  who  made  the  worst  of  every- 
thing, reported  in  September  1771  that  there  was  a 
disposition-  to  let  the  quarrel  subside. 

But  one  perennial  source  of  discomfort  and  disorder 
remained  in  full  operation.  The  Revenue  laws  were  in 

1  In  the  session  of  1772,  (to  be  quite  accurate,)  during  the  progress  of 
the  Annual  Mutiny  Bill  through  the  House  of  Commons  a  few  words  were 
said  about  Courts-martial  in  America. 

VOL.  I.  H 


98  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

those  days  ill  obeyed,  and  worse  liked,  all  the  Empire 
over;  and  it  was  extremely  difficult  to  enforce  them. 
Communication  by  land  and  sea  was  not  on  system ; 
and  traffic  and  travel  were  conducted  along  numerous 
and  ever-varying  channels  by  the  agency  of  rough  and 
ready  men.  The  police  was  insufficient,  and  badly 
organised  ;  and,  above  all,  the  State,  when  demanding 
its  dues,  had  the  mass  of  the  community  against  it. 
From  the  peers  and  members  of  Parliament  who  walked 
ashore  at  Dover,  with  three  embroidered  suits  of  silk 
and  satin  worn  one  inside  another,  down  to  the  poor 
wives  in  the  Kent  and  Sussex  villages  who  drank  their 
smuggled  Dutch  tea  laced  with  smuggled  French  brandy, 
the  Custom-house  had  no  partisans,  and  few  contributors 
except  under  stern  compulsion.  Nobody  had  a  good 
word  for  it  except  honest  or  timid  traders  whose  market 
was  spoiled  by  illicit  dealing ;  or  moralists  who  preached 
abstinence  from  smuggling  as  a  counsel  of  perfection, 
the  observance  of  which  placed  a  man  out  of  the  reach 
of  temptation  to  graver  crimes.  The  position  is  clearly 
laid  down  by  Franklin.  "  There  are  those  in  the  world 
who  would  not  wrong  a  neighbour,  but  make  no  scruple 
of  cheating  the  King.  The  reverse,  however,  does  not 
hold ;  for  whoever  scruples  cheating  the  King  will  cer- 
tainly not  wrong  his  neighbour." 

In  the  three  kingdoms  practice  was  everywhere  lax ; 
while  in  many  districts  the  population  lived  by  smug- 
gling as  generally,  and  almost  as  openly,  as  Lancashire 
lived  by  spinning.  The  Mr.  Holroyd,  who  was  after- 
wards Lord  Sheffield,  complained  to  Arthur  Young  in 
1771  that  want  of  hands  cramped  the  agriculture  of 
Sussex.  "  All  the  lively  able  young  men  are  employed 
in  smuggling.  They  can  have  a  guinea  a  week  as  riders 
and  carriers  without  any  risk.  Therefore  it  is  not  to 
be  expected  that  they  will  labour  for  eight  shillings." 
Lord  Holland's  country  seat  lay  between  Broadstairs 
and  Margate,  across  the  top  of  a  pathway  which  led 
from  the  beach  of  a  convenient  inlet  between  two  chalk 
headlands.  A  party  of  coastguardsmen  inhabit  the  house, 


TRADE  AND  REVENUE  99 

now  that  they  are  less  wanted.'  According  to  George 
Selwyn,  all  Lord  Holland's  servants  were  professed 
smugglers ;  and  Selwyn's  own  servant  made  a  profit  by 
taking  contraband  goods  off  their  hands.  Lord  Carlisle 
sate  on  a  special  Commission  as  the  representative  of  his 
country  at  a  moment  when  she  was  going  into  war  with 
half  the  civilized  world  because  the  Americans  would  not 
pay  the  Tea-duty.  Not  many  years  before  his  Lordship's 
town-mansion  had  been  beset  by  Custom-house  officers. 
It  appeared  that  Lady  Carlisle's  chairman,  like  the  rest 
of  his  fraternity,  used  to  employ  his  leisure,  when  the 
London  season  was  over  and  he  was  no  longer  on  duty 
between  the  poles,  in  landing  tea  surreptitiously  from 
the  ships  in  the  river.1  Lord  Dartmouth  had  a  corre- 
spondent in  Cornwall  who  from  time  to  time  gave  him 
information  about  what  was  going  on  in  a  part  of  the 
world  which  lay  a  great  deal  nearer  home  than  the  shores 
of  Maine  and  New  Hampshire.  "  I  am  concerned  in 
the  wine  trade,"  this  gentleman  wrote,  "  and  between 
myself  and  partners  we  have  a  considerable  capital  in 
the  trade ;  but  on  account  of  the  smuggling  on  every 
side  of  us,  and  our  rivals  in  trade  doing  such  things  as 
I  trust  our  consciences  ever  will  start  back  from  with 
abhorrence,  we  hardly  make  common  interest  of  our 
money."  Lisbon  wine,  he  goes  on  to  say,  which  no 
honest  merchant  could  import  at  less  than  four  shillings 
a  gallon,  was  sold  throughout  the  county  for  half  a 
crown.  Rum,  which  had  paid  duty,  did  not  reimburse 
the  importer  at  less  than  nine  shillings ;  but  everybody 
who  wanted  to  drink  it  was  able  to  buy  it  at  five.  The 
tobacconists  would  purchase,  with  circumstances  of  great 
ostentation,  one  pound  of  duty-paid  tobacco,  and  under 
cover  of  that  transaction  would  sell  twenty  pounds  which 
had  been  smuggled  over  from  Guernsey. 

The  officers  of  the  Revenue  were  overmatched  by  sea 
and  land.  Sixty  horses,  each  carrying  a  hundredweight 
and  a  half  of  tea,  had  been  seen  traversing  Cornwall 

1  Historical  Manuscripts  Commission ;  Fifteenth  Report,  Appendix, 
Part  VI.  ;  pp.  273  and  297  of  the  Carlisle  Papers. 

H  2 


IOO  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

in  bright  moonlight  to  supply  the  wants  of  Devonshire. 
When  conveying  their  goods  across  country  the  contra- 
band traders  did  the  law  so  much  compliment  as  to 
confine  their  operations  to  the  night ;  but  any  hour  of 
the  day  was  a  business  hour  for  the  large  Irish  wher- 
ries, (as  they  then  were  called,)  which  infested  the  Cor- 
nish coast.  A  Revenue  cutter  stationed  to  the  south  of 
Tintagel  Head  was  chased  by  one  of  these  smugglers. 
The  King's  vessel  took  refuge  in  Padstow  harbour,  and 
her  adversary  hung  out  a  flag,  and  fired  a  salvo  of  seven 
guns  in  honour  of  the  victory.  That  was  the  condition 
of  an  English  county  which  had  forty-four  representa- 
tives in  Parliament  to  look  after  its  interests  and  its  pro- 
prieties. It  was  almost  pharisaical  for  Ministers,  with 
such  a  state  of  things  at  their  own  doors,  to  maintain 
that  public  morality  demanded  of  them  to  set  fleets  and 
armies  in  motion  because  the  Revenue  was  defrauded, 
and  its  officers  flouted,  in  half-settled  regions  on  the  out- 
skirts of  the  Empire.1 

It  cannot  of  course  be  denied  that  in  America,  and 
most  of  all  in  New  England,  enmity  to  the  claims  of  the 
Revenue  was  active  and  universal.  The  origin  of  that 
enmity  lay  far  back  in  history.  It  has  been  observed 
by  a  writer,  who  knew  his  subject  well,  that  the  part 
which  the  merchants  and  shipowners  of  the  Northern 
colonies  played  in  the  contest  with  the  home  Govern- 
ment has  been  understated  both  as  regards  the  impor- 
tance of  their  action,  and  the  breadth  and  justice  of  the 
motives  by  which  it  was  inspired.2  They  had  been  born 
into  the  inheritance  of  a  cruel  wrong,  which  was  more 
deeply  felt  as  the  forces  that  govern  trade  came  to  be 
better  understood,  and  in  some  cases  were  for  the  first 
time  discovered,  Cromwell,  with  an  insight  beyond  his 

1  William  Rawlins  to  the   Earl  of  Dartmouth,  August  26,  1765,  from 
St.  Columb.     Again,  from  the  same  to  the  same,  April  24,    1775,  from 
Padstow.     Historical  Manuscripts   Commission ;    Fifteenth   Report,  Ap- 
pendix, Part  I. 

2  Loyalists  of  the  American  Revolution,  by  Lorenzo  Sabine,  vol.  i.,  pp.  3 
to  14. 


TRADE  AND  REVENUE  IOI 

age,  had  refused  to  fetter  and  discourage  the  infant  com- 
merce of  America  ;  and  under  the  Commonwealth  that 
commerce  grew  fast  towards  prosperous  maturity.  'But 
a  Stuart  was  no  sooner  on  the  throne  than  the  British 
Parliament  entered  on  a  course  of  selfish  legislation 
which  killed  the  direct  maritime  trade  between  our  de- 
pendencies and  foreign  ports,  and,  (to  borrow  the  words 
of  an  eminent  historian,)  deliberately  crushed  every  form 
of  colonial  manufacture  which  could  possibly  compete 
with  the  manufactures  of  England.1 

The  traditional  resentment  against  such  injustice,  kept 
alive  by  the  continuing  and  ever-increasing  material  in- 
jury which  it  inflicted,  arrayed  men  of  all  classes,  creeds, 
and  parties  in  opposition  to  the  interests  of  the  Excheq- 
uer, and  to  the  officers  by  whom  those  interests  were 
guarded.  A  gentleman  of  New  York  says,  in  a  letter 
written  shortly  after  the  American  Revolution  broke  out : 
"  I  fix  all  the  blame  of  these  proceedings  on  the  Presby- 
terians. You  would  ask  whether  no  Church  of  England 
people  were  among  them.  Yes,  there  were;  to  their 
eternal  shame  be  it  spoken.  But  in  general  they  were 
interested  either  as  smugglers  of  tea,  or  as  being  over- 
burdened with  dry  goods  they  knew  not  how  to  pay 
for."  2  Thomas  Hancock,  —  the  uncle  of  John  Hancock, 
to  whom,  oblivious  of  political  divergences,  he  left  most 
of  his  property,  —  was  an  ardent  royalist  and  a  declared 
Tory.  He  was  reputed  to  be  worth  that  comfortable 
amount  of  money  which  his  contemporaries,  in  the 
phrase  used  by  Pope  and  Arbuthnot,  still  called  a  plum. 
Hancock  had  made  the  better  part  of  his  fortune  by  im- 
porting contraband  tea  from  Holland,  and  supplying  it 
to  the  mess-tables  of  the  army  and  navy.  Considering 
that  it  was  to  people  holding  his  political  opinions  that 

1  Mr.  Lecky,  in  the  twelfth  chapter  of  his  History,  treats  of  the  commer- 
cial relations  between   England  and   the  American  colonies.     Within  the 
compass  of  four  pages  he  gives  a  description  of  their  character  and  conse- 
quences which  is  clear,  full,  and  unanswerable. 

2  American  Archives,  prepared  and  published  under  authority  of  an 
Act  of  Congi-ess.     The  letter  is  dated  May  31,  1774. 


IO2  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

the  Crown  lawyers  would  resort  if  they  had  occasion  to 
pack  a  jury,  it  is  not  difficult  to  compute  their  chances 
of  securing  a  conviction  on  a  charge  of  evading  the 
Revenue.  Whenever  a  gauger  or  tide-waiter  was  found 
tripping,  the  Court-house  overflowed  in  every  quarter 
with  triumphant  emotion.  About  the  period  of  Preston's 
trial,  John  Adams  argued  a  suit  for  a  penalty  against  a 
Custom-house  officer  for  taking  greater  fees  than  those 
allowed  by  law  :  and,  in  his  own  estimation,  he  argued 
it  very  indifferently.  He  won  his  case ;  and  in  the 
enthusiasm  of  the  moment,  somewhat  to  his  amusement 
and  yet  more  to  his  disgust,  he  was  overwhelmed  with 
assurances  that  he  had  outdone  all  his  own  previous 
efforts,  and  would  thenceforward  rank  as  an  equal 
of  the  greatest  orator  that  ever  spoke  in  Rome  or 
Athens. 

For  ten  years  past,  ever  since  George  Grenville's 
influence  began  to  be  felt  in  the  distant  parts  of  the 
Empire,  the  claims  of  the  Revenue  had  been  enforced 
with  unwonted  rigour,  which  in  the  summer  of  1771 
assumed  an  aggressive  and  exasperating  character. 
Sandwich,  who  had  succeeded  Hawke  at  the  Admiralty, 
had  appointed  an  officer  with  his  own  surname,  and, 
(as  it  is  superfluous  to  state,)  of  his  own  party,  to  com- 
mand the  powerful  squadron  now  stationed  in  American 
waters.  Admiral  Montagu,  who  came  fresh  from  hear- 
ing the  inner  mind  of  the  Bedfords  as  expressed  in  the 
confidence  of  the  punch-bowl,  was  always  ready  to  make 
known  his  opinion  of  New  England  and  its  inhabitants 
in  epithets  which,  on  a  well-ordered  man-of-war,  were 
seldom  heard  abaft  the  mast.  In  comparison  with  him, 
(so  it  was  said,)  an  American  freeholder,  living  in  a 
log-house  twenty  feet  square,  was  a  well-bred  and  polite 
man.  To  make  matters  worse,  the  Admiral's  lady  was 
as  much  too  fine  as  the  Admiral  himself  was  coarse. 
"She  is  very  full,"  wrote  Adams,  "of  her  remarks  at 
the  assembly  and  the  concert.  'Can  this  lady  afford 
the  jewels  and  dresses  she  wears  ? '  '  Oh,  that  my  son 
should  come  to  dance  with  a  mantua-maker ! '"  Between 


TRADE  AND  REVENUE  103 

them  they  encouraged,  in  those  officers  whom  their  ex- 
ample swayed,  a  tone  of  arrogance  and  incivility  foreign 
indeed  to  a  noble  service.1 

The  Navy,  like  every  profession,  has  its  bad  bargains  ; 
and  the  lieutenant  in  command  of  the  schooner  Gaspee, 
which  was  watching  the  coast  of  Rhode  Island,  set  him- 
self to  the  task  of  translating  the  language  used  on  the 
quarter-deck  of  the  flagship  into  overt  acts.  He  stopped 
and  searched  vessels  without  adequate  pretext,  seized 
goods  illegally,  and  fired  at  the  market  boats  as  they 
entered  Newport  harbour.  He  treated  the  farmers  on 
the  islands  much  as  the  Saracens  in  the  Middle  Ages 
treated  the  coast  population  of  Italy,  cutting  down  their 
trees  for  fuel,  and  taking  their  sheep  when  his  crew 
ran  short  of  fresh  meat.  The  injured  parties  made  their 
voices  heard ;  and  the  case  was  laid  before  the  Admiral, 
who  approved  the  conduct  of  his  subordinate  officer, 
and  announced  that,  as  sure  as  any  people  from  New- 
port attempted  to  rescue  a  vessel,  he  would  hang  them 
as  pirates.  It  was  a  foolish  answer  as  addressed  to 
men  who  were  not  long-suffering,  nor  particular  as  to 
their  methods  of  righting  a  grievance ;  and  they  resolved 
that,  if  it  came  to  a  hanging  matter,  it  should  be  for  a 
sheep,  and  not  for  a  lamb.  At  the  first  convenient 
opportunity  they  boarded  the  royal  schooner,  set  the 
crew  on  shore,  and  burned  the  vessel  to  the  water's 
edge.  A  terrible  commotion  followed,  Thurlow,  in  his 
capacity  as  Attorney-General,  denounced  the  crime  as 

1  The  Admiral's  appearance  was  milder  than  his  language.  Philip 
Freneau,  in  a  satirical  Litany,  prayed  to  be  delivered 

"  From  groups  at  St.  James's,  who  slight  our  petitions, 
And  fools  that  are  waiting  for  further  submissions  ; 
From  a  nation  whose  manners  are  rough  and  abrupt ; 
From  scoundrels  and  rascals  whom  gold  can  corrupt  ; 
From  pirates  sent  out  by  command  of  the  King 
To  murder  and  plunder,  but  never  to  swing  ; 
From  hot-headed  Montagu,  mighty  to  swear, 
The  little  fat  man  with  his  pretty  white  hair." 

It  was  believed  in  America  that  Sandwich  and  the  Admiral  were  brothers; 
and  the  story,  in  that  shape,  has  got  into  history. 


104  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

of  a  deeper  dye  than  piracy,  and  reported  that  the 
whole  business  was  of  five  times  the  magnitude  of  the 
Stamp  Act.  By  a  Royal  order  in  Council  the  authori- 
ties of  Rhode  Island  were  commanded  to  deliver  the 
culprits  into  the  hands  of  the  Admiral,  with  a  view  of 
their  being  tried  in  London.  But  before  the  crew  of 
a  Providence  fishing-boat  could  be  arraigned  at  the  Old 
Bailey,  and  hanged  in  chains  in  the  Essex  marshes, 
they  had  first  to  be  got  out  of  Narragansett  Bay ;  and 
Stephen  Hopkins,  the  old  Chief  Justice  of  Rhode  Island, 
refused  to  lend  his  sanction  to  their  arrest  in  face  of  the 
destiny  which  awaited  them.  Admiral  Montagu  himself, 
right  for  once,  acknowledged  that  British  Acts  of  Parlia- 
ment,—  at  any  rate  such  Acts  as  the  revived  statute  of 
Henry  the  Eighth,  —  would  never  go  down  in  Amer- 
ica unless  forced  by  the  point  of  the  sword.  And 
the  estimable  and  amiable  Dartmouth,  who  now  was 
Secretary  of  the  Colonies,  contrived  to  hush  up  a  diffi- 
culty which,  as  he  was  told  by  a  wise  and  friendly 
correspondent,  if  it  had  been  pressed  to  an  extreme 
issue,  "  would  have  set  the  continent  into  a  fresh 
flame."1 

It  was  too  much  to  expect  that  Sandwich  and  Thurlow 
would  sit  quiet  under  their  defeat.  There  was  no  use 
in  having  the  law,  good  or  bad,  on  their  side  if  those 
who  interpreted  and  administered  it  in  America  were 
independent  of  their  influence  and  dictation.  The  mem- 
bers of  that  Cabinet  were  never  slow  to  make  up  a 
prescription  for  anything  which  they  regarded  as  a  dis- 
ease in  the  body  politic ;  and,  as  usual,  they  tried  it  first 
on  Massachusetts.  It  was  arranged  that  her  judges 
should  henceforward  have  their  salaries  paid  by  the 
Crown,  and  not  by  the  Colony.  Samuel  Adams  dis- 
cerned the  threatening  nature  of  the  proposal  itself,  and 
foresaw  the  grave  perils  involved  in  the  principle  which 
lay  beneath  it.  At  his  instigation  the  patriots  of  Boston 

1  Dartmouth  Correspondence;  August  29,  1772,  and  June  16,  1773. 
Historical  Manuscripts  Commission;  Fourteenth  Report,  Appendix, 
Part  X. 


TRADE  AND  REVENUE  105 

invited  all  the  townships  of  the  province  to  establish 
Committees  of  Correspondence  for  the  purpose  of  guard- 
ing their  chartered  rights,  and  adjured  every  legislative 
body  throughout  America  to  aid  them  in  repelling  an 
invasion  which,  if  it  succeeded  in  their  own  case,  un- 
doubtedly would  be  directed  in  turn  against  all  their 
neighbours.  Massachusetts  rose  to  the  call ;  and  the 
Assembly  of  Virginia,  with  the  political  instinct  which 
seldom  misled  it,  took  prompt  and  courageous  action ; 
but  in  other  quarters  the  response  was  neither  hearty 
nor  universal.  The  spirit  which  had  defeated  the  Stamp 
Act  could  not  be  aroused  at  short  notice  and  on  a  partial 
issue ;  and  friends  and  adversaries  alike  knew  that  the 
threatened  colony,  if  things  came  to  the  worst,  must  be 
prepared  to  rely  mainly  upon  herself. 

There  was,  however,  good  reason  to  doubt  whether 
the  mother-country  was  in  the  temper  to  fight  so  paltry 
a  matter  to  such  a  bitter  end.  England,  outside  Parlia- 
ment and  within  it,  was  tired  of  bullying  and  coercing 
men  who  after  all  were  Englishmen,  whose  case  rested 
on  honoured  English  precedents,  and  was  asserted  and 
maintained  by  honest  English  methods.  Never  was  a 
community,  (as  the  men  of  Massachusetts  pathetically 
complained,)  so  long  and  so  pitilessly  assailed  with 
malicious  abuse  as  theirs  had  been  during  the  past  two 
years  by  enemies  in  London  and  within  their  own 
borders.  The  reaction  now  set  in;  and  a  large  and 
increasing  section  of  the  English  nation  watched  with 
respect,  and  often  with  sympathy,  a  resistance  con- 
ducted on  strict  constitutional  lines  to  that  which,  even 
as  seen  from  England,  looked  very  like  a  deliberate 
system  of  small-minded  and  vexatious  tyranny.  In 
July  1/73,  Franklin  addressed  a  letter  from  London  to 
Thomas  Gushing,  then  Speaker  of  the  Massachusetts 
Assembly.  "With  regard,"  he  said,  "to  the  sentiments 
of  people  in  general  here  concerning  America,  I  must 
say  that  we  have  among  them  many  friends  and  well- 
wishers.  The  Dissenters  are  all  for  us,  and  many 
of  the  merchants  and  manufacturers.  There  seems  to 


IO6  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

be,  even  among  the  country  gentlemen,  a  growing  sense 
of  our  importance,  a  disapprobation  of  the  harsh  meas- 
ures with  which  we  have  been  treated,  and  a  wish  that 
some  means  might  be  found  of  perfect  reconciliation." 

Under  such  circumstances  it  would  have  seemed  im- 
possible that  a  Ministry  could  rise  to  such  a  height  of 
perverted  ingenuity  as  to  deliver  Massachusetts  from 
her  isolation  ;  to  unite  all  the  colonies  in  sudden,  hot, 
and  implacable  disaffection  towards  the  Crown  ;  and  to 
drive  them  into  courses  which  would  shock  the  pride 
and  alienate  the  good-will  of  England.  But  even  that 
feat  proved  to  be  within  the  resources  of  statesmanship. 
Foremost  among  the  questions  of  the  day  at  Westmin- 
ster was  the  condition  of  the  East  India  Company,  which 
now  stood  on  the  verge  of  bankruptcy.  The  home  Gov- 
ernment came  forward  handsomely  with  a  large  loan  on 
easy  terms,  and  a  pledge  not  to  insist  on  an  annual  trib- 
ute of  four  hundred  thousand  pounds  which  India  had 
somehow  contrived  to  pay,  in  spite  of  her  deficits,  into  the 
British  exchequer.  But,  over  and  above  these  palliatives, 
the  Cabinet  had  at  its  disposal  the  means  of  relieving  the 
famous  Corporation  from  all  its  embarrassments.  There 
lay  stored  in  the  warehouses  tea  and  other  Indian  goods 
to  the  value  of  four  millions,  which  had  been  in  course 
of  accumulation  ever  since  the  Company,  not  by  its  own 
fault,  had  lost  a  most  promising  customer.  The  Ameri- 
can colonies,  making  a  protest  against  their  fiscal  wrongs 
in  a  form  which  had  its  attractions  for  a  thrifty  people, 
had  supplied  themselves  with  smuggled  tea  from  France, 
Denmark,  Sweden,  and  especially  from  Holland ;  and 
those  foreign  merchants  who  had  been  tempted  into  the 
trade  soon  learned  to  accompany  their  consignments  of 
tea  with  other  sorts  of  Oriental  produce.  The  Custom- 
house officers  reckoned  that  Indian  goods,  which  paid 
nothing  to  the  Treasury  and  brought  no  profit  to  the 
Company,  found  their  way  into  America  to  the  amount 
of  half  a  million  in  money  every  twelvemonth. 

The  opportunity  was  golden,  and  without  alloy.  If 
Ministers  could  bring  themselves  to  adopt  the  sugges- 


TRADE  AND  REVENUE  107 

tion  made  by  the  East  Indian  Directors,  and  advise  a 
willing  House  of  Commons  to  repeal  the  Tea-duty,  they 
would,  by  one  and  the  same  straightforward  and  easy 
operation,  choke  up  the  underground  channels  along 
which  commerce  had  begun  to  flow,  pacify  the  colonies, 
and  save  the  East  India  Company.  The  demand  of  the 
American  market  for  tea  was  already  enormous.  The 
most  portable  and  easily  prepared  of  beverages,  it  was 
then  used  in  the  backwoods  of  the  West  as  lavishly  as 
now  in  the  Australian  bush.  In  more  settled  districts 
the  quantity  absorbed  on  all  occasions  of  ceremony  is 
incredible  to  a  generation  which  has  ceased  to  rejoice 
and  to  mourn  in  large  companies,  and  at  great  cost. 
The  legislative  assembly  of  more  than  one  colony  had 
passed  sumptuary  laws  to  keep  the  friends  of  the  de- 
ceased from  drinking  his  widow  and  orphans  out  of 
house  and  home ;  and  whatever  the  gentlemen,  who 
drove  and  rode  in  to  a  funeral  from  thirty  miles  round, 
were  in  the  habit  of  drinking,  the  ladies  drank  tea. 
The  very  Indians,  in  default  of  something  stronger, 
took  it  twice  a  day  ; 1  and  however  much  attached  they 
might  be  to  their  Great  Father  beyond  the  water,  it 
must  not  be  supposed  that  they  made  special  arrange- 
ments in  order  to  ensure  that  he  had  been  paid  his  dues 
on  the  article  which  they  consumed.  If  only  the  Chan- 
cellor of  the  Exchequer,  with  a  few  heartfelt  sentences 
of  frank  retractation  and  cordial  welcome,  had  thrown 
completely  open  the  door  of  the  Custom-house  which 
already  was  ajar,  all  would  have  been  well,  then  and 
thereafter.  Before  Parliament  was  many  sessions  older, 
America,  (after  a  less  questionable  fashion  than  the 
expression,  when  used  in  an  English  budget  speech, 
usually  implies,)  would  have  drunk  the  East  India  Com- 
pany out  of  all  its  difficulties. 

A  course  which  went  direct  to  the  right  point  was  not 
of  a  nature  to  find  favour  with  George  the  Third  and 
his  Ministers.  They  adopted  by  preference  a  plan 
under  which  the  East  India  Company  was  allowed  a 

1  Dartmouth  Correspondence ;  January  19,  1773. 


108  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

drawback  of  the  whole  Tea-duty  then  payable  in  Eng- 
land,  while  the  Exchequer  continued  to  claim  the  three- 
pence on  the  pound  which  was  paid,  (or,  to  speak  more 
exactly,  left  unpaid,)  in  America.  Their  object  was 
such  as  every  one  who  ran  a  boatload  of  smuggled 
goods  between  Penobscot  Bay,  and  the  mouth  of  the 
Savannah  River,  could  read.  This  wise  scheme,  (so 
Franklin  put  it,)  was  to  take  off  as  much  duty  in  Eng- 
land as  would  make  the  Company's  tea  cheaper  in 
America  than  any  which  foreigners  could  supply ;  and 
at  the  same  time  to  maintain  the  duty  in  America,  and 
thus  keep  alive  the  right  of  Parliament  to  tax  the  colo- 
nies. "  They  have  no  idea,"  he  wrote,  "  that  any  people 
can  act  from  any  other  principle  but  that  of  interest; 
and  they  believe  that  threepence  in  a  pound  of  tea,  of 
which  one  does  not  perhaps  drink  ten  pounds  in  a 
year,  is  sufficient  to  overcome  all  the  patriotism  of  an 
American." 

They  were  not  long  in  finding  out  their  mistake.  The 
King,  (so  North  stated,)  meant  to  try  the  question  with 
America;  and  arrangements  were  accordingly  made 
which,  whatever  else  may  be  said  of  them,  undoubtedly 
accomplished  that  end.  In  the  autumn  of  1773  ships 
laden  with  tea  sailed  for  the  four  principal  ports  on  the 
Atlantic  seaboard ;  and  agents  or  consignees  of  the 
East  India  Company  were  appointed  by  letter  to  attend 
their  arrival  in  each  of  the  four  towns.  The  captain  of 
the  vessel  despatched  to  Philadelphia  found  such  a  re- 
ception awaiting  him  that  he  sailed  straight  back  to 
England.  Boston,  under  circumstances  which  have 
been  too  frequently  described  to  admit  of  their  ever 
again  being  related  in  detail,  gratified  the  curiosity  of 
an  energetic  patriot  who  expressed  a  wish  to  see  whether 
tea  could  be  made  with  salt  water.  At  Charleston  the 
cargo  was  deposited  in  a  damp  cellar,  where  it  was 
spoiled  as  effectually  as  if  it  had  been  floating  on  the 
tide  up  and  down  the  channel  between  James  Island 
and  Sullivan's  Island ;  and,  when  New  York  learned 
that  the  tea-ships  allotted  to  it  had  been  driven  by  a  gale 


TRADE  AND  REVENUE  109 

off  the  coast,  men  scanned  the  horizon,  like  the  garrison 
of  Londonderry  watching  for  the  English  fleet  in  Lough 
Foyle,  in  their  fear  lest  fate  should  rob  them  of  their 
opportunity  of  proving  themselves  not  inferior  in  mettle 
to  the  Bostonians.  The  great  cities,  —  to  which  all  the 
colonies  looked  as  laboratories  of  public  opinion,  and 
theatres  of  political  action,  —  had  now  deliberately  com- 
mitted themselves  to  a  policy  of  illegal  violence  which 
could  not  fail  to  wound  the  self-respect  of  the  English 
people,  and  make  Parliament,  for  many  a  long  and  sad 
year  to  come,  an  obedient  instrument  in  the  hands  of 
men  who  were  resolved,  at  all  hazards,  to  chastise  and 
humble  America. 


CHAPTER   IV 

THE    BRITISH    CABINET.       BURKE    AND    THE    WHIGS. 
CHARLES   JAMES    FOX 

THE  news  from  Boston  came  upon  the  mother-country 
in  the  provoking  shape  of  a  disagreeable  surprise.  For 
the  ordinary  English  citizen  it  was  news  indeed.  He 
had  heard  how  at  Philadelphia,  on  the  4th  of  June,  1766, 
—  the  first  King's  birthday  which  followed  the  repeal  of 
the  Stamp  Act,  —  the  healths  of  George  the  Third  and 
Doctor  Franklin  had  been  drunk  in  public  at  the  same 
table ;  and  from  that  moment  he  had  reposed  in  a  serene 
conviction  that  the  American  difficulty,  for  his  own  life- 
time at  all  events,  was  over  and  done  with.  He  took  it 
for  granted  that  the  mob  in  New  England  was  in  the 
habit  of  hunting  Custom-house  officers,  just  as  a  Lon- 
doner, in  the  days  before  railroads,  lived  in  the  belief 
that  the  mob  in  the  manufacturing  districts  of  Lan- 
cashire was  always  breaking  frames.  He  was  aware 
that  the  troops  had  shot  some  townspeople  in  the  streets 
of  Boston ;  but  he  was  equally  aware  that,  not  many 
months  before,  the  Footguards  had  shot  some  Wilkites 
in  the  Borough  of  Southwark ;  and  the  one  occurrence 
had  to  his  mind  no  deeper  and  more  permanent  signifi- 
cance than  the  other.  The  last  serious  fact  connected 
with  America,  which  had  come  to  his  knowledge,  was 
that  Parliament  had  gone  a  great  deal  more  than  half 
way  to  meet  the  wishes  of  the  colonies,  had  removed  all 
but  a  mere  fraction  of  the  unpopular  duties,  and  had 
made  an  arrangement  with  the  East  India  Company  by 
which  the  colonists  would  thenceforward  drink  tea  much 
cheaper  than  he  could  drink  it  himself.  And  now,  as 
a  recognition  of  her  patience  and  self-control,  and  as  a 


THE  BRITISH  CABINET  III 

reply  to  her  friendly  advances,  England  was  slapped  in 
her  smiling  face  with  a  zest  and  vigour  which  sent  a 
thrill  of  exultation  through  all,  in  any  quarter  of  the 
world,  who  envied  her  and  wished  her  ill.  It  was  true 
that  close  and  dispassionate  investigation  would  show 
that,  for  the  treatment  which  she  had  received,  she  had 
herself,  or  rather  her  chosen  governors,  to  thank.  But 
the  first  effect  of  an  insult  is  not  to  set  Englishmen  com- 
puting and  weighing  what  they  have  done  to  deserve  it; 
and  the  national  indignation,  in  heat  and  unanimity, 
hardly  fell  short  of  that  which  was  in  our  own  time 
aroused  throughout  the  Northern  States  of  America  by 
the  bombardment  of  Fort  Sumter. 

The  country  was  in  a  temper  for  any  folly  which  its 
rulers  would  allow  it  to  commit ;  and  unfortunately  the 
crisis  had  come  just  when  the  system  of  Personal  Gov- 
ernment had  reached  the  culminating  point  of  success 
towards  which  the  King  had  long  been  working.  Every 
particle  of  independence,  and  of  wisdom  which  dared  to 
assert  itself,  had  at  last  been  effectually  eliminated  from 
the  Cabinet.  Administrative  experience  was  to  be  found 
there,  and  some  forethought  and  circumspection,  and 
plenty  of  timidity ;  but  those  Ministers  who  were  afraid 
of  strong  courses  stood  in  much  greater  terror  of  their 
strong  monarch.  The  men  who,  in  March  1770,  had 
pronounced  themselves  against  the  retention  of  the  Tea- 
duty  were  no  longer  in  a  position  to  warn  or  to  advise 
him.  The  Duke  of  Grafton,  after  the  humiliating  de- 
feat which  on  that  occasion  he  suffered,  lost  no  time  in 
surrendering  to  Lord  North  the  first  place  in  the  Gov- 
ernment. He  consented  indeed,  at  the  instance  of  the 
King,  to  keep  the  Privy  Seal ;  but  he  consulted  his  own 
dignity  by  refusing  to  sit  as  a  subordinate  in  a  Cabinet 
which,  while  he  was  still  Prime  Minister,  had  overruled 
him  in  the  case  of  a  decision  second  in  importance  to 
none  which  any  Cabinet  was  ever  called  on  to  take. 

Conway  and  Sir  Edward  Hawke  had  retired  from 
office ;  and  Granby  had  met,  in  mournful  fashion,  death 
which  he  had  gaily  confronted  on  many  a  disputed  field. 


112  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

Though  four  generations  have  come  and  gone,  an  Eng- 
lish reader  learns  with  something  of  a  personal  shock 
that  there  was  a  dark  side  to  that  brilliant  career.  Pos- 
terity remembers  him  as  the  Master-General  of  the 
Ordnance,  and  Commander-in-Chief  of  the  army,  whom 
no  officer  envied ;  the  statesman  whom  every  ally,  and 
every  opponent,  loved ;  the  leader  of  horse  who  was 
named  with  Ziethen  and  Seidlitz  in  all  the  cavalry  bar- 
racks of  Europe ;  the  idol  of  the  people  in  days  when 
the  people  seldom  troubled  themselves  to  distinguish  be- 
tween one  politician  and  another.  But,  with  all  this, 
Granby  behind  the  scenes  was  an  erring,  an  overbur- 
dened, and  at  last  a  most  unhappy  man.  He  was  a 
jovial  companion  to  high  and  humble ;  a  profuse  and 
often  unwise  benefactor;  a  soldier  of  the  camp  in 
foreign  lands,  with  little  time,  and  less  inclination,  to 
look  closely  into  his  private  affairs  at  home ;  and,  above 
all,  an  elderly  heir-apparent  to  an  immense  estate ;  — 
and  it  cannot  be  denied  that  he  had  the  faults  of  his 
qualities  and  of  his  position.  Like  some  greater  men, 
and  with  more  excuse,  at  fifty  years  of  age  he  had  a 
broken  constitution,  and  he  was  deep  in  debt.  None 
the  less,  at  the  bidding  of  duty,  he  resisted  the  entrea- 
ties of  George  the  Third,  who  was  sincerely  desirous  not 
to  lose  him  from  the  Ministry.  Resigning  his  employ- 
ments and  emoluments,  he  retired  into  pecuniary  em- 
barrassment unrelieved  by  occupation  and  uncheered  by 
health.  A  year  afterwards  he  died  at  Scarborough, 
where  he  had  gone  in  the  hope  of  a  cure,  only  to  find 
himself  involved  in  the  worry  and  tumult  of  a  contested 
Yorkshire  election.  "You  are  no  stranger,"  a  friend  of 
the  family  writes,  "  to  the  spirit  of  procrastination.  The 
noblest  mind  that  ever  existed,  the  amiable  man  whom 
we  lament,  was  not  free  from  it.  I  have  lived  to  see 
the  first  heir,  of  a  subject,  in  the  Kingdom,  lead  a  mis- 
erable shifting  life,  attended  by  a  levee  of  duns,  and  at 
last  die  broken-hearted,  —  for  so  he  really  was,  —  rather 
than  say,  '  I  will  arise  and  go  to  my  father.'  It  is  im- 
possible to  describe  the  distress  of  the  whole  country. 


THE  BRITISH  CABINET  113 

Every  place  you  passed  through  in  tears,  and  the  Castle 
was  the  head-quarters  of  misery  and  dejection.  The 
Duke  rose  up  to  meet  me  with  an  appearance  of  cheer- 
fulness, but  soon  relapsed  into  a  sullen  melancholy,  and 
for  three  weeks  he  appeared  to  me  petrified."1 

The  departure  of  Conway,  Hawke,  and  Granby,  three 
men  of  the  sword  who  feared  nothing  except  an  unright- 
eous quarrel,  left  the  honour  of  England  in  the  keeping 
of  the  Bedfords.  For  them  it  must  be  said  that,  when 
urging  their  views  in  council,  they  had  all  the  advantage 
which  proceeds  from  sincerity  of  conviction.  Their  ideas 
of  ministerial  discretion  permitted  them,  whether  sober, 
drunk,  or  half-seas  over,  to  rail  at  the  colonists  as  rebels 
and  traitors  before  any  company  in  London  ;  and  it  may 
well  be  believed  that  they  did  not  pick  their  words  within 
the  walls  of  that  chamber  where  they  had  a  right  to 
speak  their  entire  mind  in  as  plain  terms  as  their  col- 
leagues would  endure.  What  is  known  about  the  tracta- 
bility  of  those  colleagues  is  among  the  miracles  of 
history ;  though  the  full  extent  of  it  can  only  be  con- 
jectured by  a  comparison  of  the  partial  revelations  which 
have  seen  the  light  of  day.  In  1779  Lord  North  con- 
fessed to  the  King  that,  for  at  least  three  years,  he  had 
held  in  his  heart  an  opinion  that  the  system  which  the 
Government  had  pursued  would  end  in  the  ruin  of  his 
Majesty  and  the  country.  Yet  during  three  more  years  j 
he  continued  to  pursue  that  system,  and  would  never 
have  desisted  from  it  if  Washington  had  not  been  too 
strong  for  him  abroad,  and  Charles  Fox  and  his  friends 
too  many  for  him  at  home.  Lord  Gower,  the  President  j 

1  Historical  Manuscripts  Commission,  Twelfth  Report,  Appendix,  Part 
V.  The  letter  is  in  sad  contrast  with  another  in  the  same  volume  written 
nine  years  before  to  Granby,  then  a  recalcitrant  invalid,  by  Lord  Ligonier, 
—  one  of  the  few  men  who  had  a  right  to  criticise  or  to  compliment  him. 
"  I  am  to  thank  you  for  the  remedy  you  have  discovered  for  a  fever.  It 
has  ever  been  unknown  till  your  time  ;  but  now  it  is  manifest  that,  if  a  man 
is  ordered  to  his  bed  with  this  disorder,  he  has  nothing  more  to  do  than  to 
jump  out  of  it,  get  upon  his  horse,  and  fight  away.  But  however  prevail- 
ing that  remedy  has  been  on  a  late  occasion,  I  do  not  recommend  it  for  the 
future."  Granby  had  just  come  victorious  out  of  the  last  and  fiercest  of 
his  German  battles. 

VOL.  I.  I 


114  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

of  the  Council,  supported  in  public  North's  policy,  al- 
though he  loved  it  no  better  than  did  North  himself ; 
but  five  years  so  spent  were  enough  for  him,  and  at  the 
end  of  that  period  he  appeased  his  conscience  by  a  resig- 
nation which,  for  a  member  of  that  Ministry,  may  be 
called  prompt,  and  even  premature.  Strangest  of  all 
was  the  letter  in  which  Lord  Barrington,  before  ever  a 
cannon  had  been  fired  or  a  sabre  stained,  had  laid  down 
in  black  and  white  his  inward  judgement  on  what  had 
been  the  origin  of  the  dispute,  and  on  what  should  be  the 
conduct  of  the  war.  He  argued  that  it  was  madness  on 
the  part  of  any  Ministry  to  impose  a  tax  which  no  Min- 
istry had  the  strength  to  levy ;  that  the  attempt  to  fight 
the  colonists  on  land  could  only  result  in  disaster  and 
disgrace ;  that  a  judicious  employment  of  our  naval 
force  was  the  least  unpromising  method  of  combating 
the  rebellion  ;  and  that,  so  far  from  reinforcing  the  army 
in  Massachusetts,  the  garrison  should  at  once  be  with- 
drawn from  Boston,  leaving  that  undutiful  city  to  its 
own  devices.  Those  were  his  views,  deliberately  enter- 
tained and  never  abandoned ;  and  nevertheless,  as 
Secretary  at  War,  he  despatched  to  America  every 
soldier  who  fought  between  the  day  of  Bunker's  Hill 
and  the  day  of  Monmouth  Court  House. 

The  theory  of  ministerial  responsibility  which  then 
prevailed  in  high  official  circles  was  carefully  laid  down 
by  Lord  Barrington's  brother,  the  Bishop  of  Durham, 
in  a  passage  of  biography  agreeably  redolent  of  fra- 
ternal pride.  "  In  conjunction,"  the  Bishop  wrote, 
"  with  the  other  members  of  Administration,  Lord  Bar- 
rington bore  the  censures  which  were  now  very  gen- 
erally directed  against  the  supporters  of  the  American 
War :  yet  no  person  less  deserved  those  censures. 
There  is  the  clearest  and  most  decisive  evidence  that 
Lord  Barrington  disapproved  the  adopted  mode  of 
coercion,  and  that  he  submitted,  both  to  the  King  and 
his  Ministers,  his  sentiments  on  the  subject  in  the  most 
unequivocal  terms.  His  opinion  was  that,  though  it 
became  his  duty  to  remonstrate  with  his  colleagues  in 


THE  BRITISH  CABINET  11$ 

office,  it  was  neither  honourable  nor  proper  for  him  to 
appeal  to  the  uninformed  judgements  of  others,  and  to 
play  a  game  of  popularity  at  the  expense  of  the  public." 

The  colleague  to  whom  Lord  Barrington  more  partic- 
ularly addressed  his  remonstrances  was  Lord  Dart- 
mouth, the  Secretary  of  State  in  charge  of  America. 
His  selection  for  that  post  had  been  an  act  of  true 
wisdom.  With  an  empire  such  as  ours,  a  judicious 
ruler,  who  has  an  appointment  to  make,  takes  due 
account  of  local  tastes  and  preferences.  He  will  flatter 
one  colony  by  sending  to  it  as  Governor  a  public  man 
who  is  supposed  to  have  studied  agriculture,  and  will 
please  another  by  appointing  a  nobleman  who  undoubt- 
edly understands  horses.  Bringing  the  same  know- 
ledge of  mankind  into  higher  regions,  George  the  Third 
and  Lord  North  paid  America  a  marked  and  acceptable 
compliment  when  they  committed  the  care  of  her  in- 
terests to  the  most  distinguished  member  of  a  school  of 
thought  and  practice  which  was  already  beginning  to  be 
called  Evangelical. 

The  fame  of  Lord  Dartmouth  had  been  carried  far 
and  wide  throughout  the  English-speaking  world  by 
that  association  of  brave  and  sincere  men  who  were  in 
hard  conflict  with  the  vices  of  the  age,  and  in  earnest 
protest  against  the  lukewarmness  of  its  religious  faith. 
He  was  a  Churchman ;  and  the  claims  of  the  Establish- 
ment were  in  small  favour  with  the  colonists.  But  he 
belonged  to  that  section  of  Churchmen  who  looked  out- 
side, as  well  as  within,  their  own  borders  for  allies  to 
aid  them  in  their  lifelong  warfare  against  ignorance  and 
indifference,  misery,  cruelty,  and  sin.  Lord  Halifax, 
accounted  a  rake  and  spendthrift  even  by  that  lax  gen- 
eration, had  gone  as  far  as  he  dared,  and  much  farther 
than  was  safe,  into  a  scheme  for  planting  bishops  in 
America.  But  Dartmouth,  the  light  of  whose  goodness 
would  have  shone  in  the  brightest  days  of  Christianity, 
recognised  only  one  spiritual  banner  beneath  which 
men  should  fight,  and  cared  little  or  nothing  to  what 
regiment  belonged  the  arm  that  sustained  it,  if  only  it 


Il6  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

was  carried  worthily.  He  had  long  ago  applied  himself 
to  the  sage  and  praiseworthy  task  of  turning  to  account 
the  spirit  of  enthusiasm  which  had  grown  strong  within 
the  Church  itself,  under  the  fostering  care  of  John 
Wesley.  The  great  preacher  in  his  letters  to  the  Sec- 
retary of  State,  occasionally  pushed  somewhat  far 
a  friend's  privilege  of  criticism  and  remonstrance ;  but 
Dartmouth  had  no  notion  of  throwing  away  the  ad- 
vantage of  such  an  intimacy  on  account  of  a  few  frank 
and  rough  words.  "Have  you  a  person,"  asked 
Wesley,  "in  all  England  who  speaks  to  your  lordship 
so  plain  and  downright  as  I  do ;  who  considers  not  the 
peer,  but  the  man  ;  who  rarely  commends,  but  often 
blames,  and  perhaps  would  do  it  oftener  if  you  desired 
it?"  More  than  once,  as  will  be  seen  in  the  course  of 
this  narrative,  Wesley  made  good  his  promise  at  a  time 
when  honest  advice  was  of  priceless  value. 

Dartmouth  assisted  Lady  Huntingdon  with  his  means 
and  influence,  and  the  still  more  needed  contribution  of 
his  sound  sense  and  knowledge  of  the  world,  in  her 
endeavours  to  provide  English  pulpits  with  a  supply  of 
preachers  who  believed  what  they  said,  and  were  trained 
in  the  art  of  saying  it.  He  found  a  wiser,  and  not  less 
open-handed,  auxiliary  than  her  Ladyship  in  John  Thorn- 
ton, the  true  founder  of  the  Evangelicalism  which  was 
prevalent  and  prominent  in  the  Established  Church 
during  the  period  when  that  Church  took  a  forward  part 
in  courageous  and  unpopular  movements  for  the  general 
benefit  of  mankind.  The  two  friends  quietly  and  steadily 
applied  themselves  to  mend  the  income  of  poor  livings 
held  by  good  men,  to  purchase  advowsons,  and  to  confer 
them  upon  clergymen  who  expounded  the  Gospel  as 
they  themselves  had  learned  it.  While  pursuing  this 
work  they  had  the  rare  privilege  of  establishing  a  per- 
manent claim  on  the  gratitude  of  very  many  who  have 
little  sympathy  with  their  specific  creed.  Lord  Dart- 
mouth made  interest  in  high  episcopal  quarters  to  obtain 
the  ordination  of  John  Newton,  who  was  too  much  in 
earnest  about  religion  to  be  readily  entrusted  with  a 


THE  BRITISH  CABINET  \\-J 

commission  to  teach  it,  except  as  a  matter  of  favour  to  a 
great  man.  The  statesman  placed  the  divine  in  the 
curacy  of  Olney  ;  and  Mr.  Thornton  added  an  allowance 
of  two  hundred  pounds  a  year.  "  Be  hospitable,"  he 
wrote  to  Newton,  "  and  keep  an  open  house  for  such  as 
are  worthy  of  entertainment.  Help  the  poor  and  needy." 
That  roof  soon  sheltered  a  guest  than  whom  few  had 
been  worthier  of  entertainment  since  Abraham's  tent 
was  pitched  on  the  plains  of  Mamre,  and  none  had  been 
more  in  need  of  it  since  this  world  began.  For  William 
Cowper  spent  the  period  of  gloom  and  depression  which 
fell  upon  him  in  middle  life  under  Newton's  care,  and 
as  a  member  of  his  family.  It  was  at  Dartmouth's  cost 
that  the  house  had  been  fitted  and  furnished,  and  deco- 
rated in  a  manner  to  suit  the  taste  of  the  inmates.  And 
to  Dartmouth  Newton  made  periodical  reports  of  his 
friend's  condition  in  phraseology  now  long  out  of  date, 
but  alive  with  sentiments  of  tenderness  and  delicacy 
which  were  to  the  honour  of  him  who  wrote,  and  of  him 
who  read.1 

Cowper,  and  Newton,  and  Lady  Huntingdon,  and 
the  Wesleys  were  Church  people,  or  laboured  stoutly  to 
be  accounted  so.  But  Dartmouth's  breadth  of  charity 
and  ardour  of  conviction  were  bounded  by  no  ecclesias- 
tical barriers  ;  and  in  this  respect  he  was  in  full  sym- 
pathy with  his  friend  John  Thornton,  who  seldom  enjoyed 
an  excursion  to  the  mountains  or  the  sea-coast  unless 
he  was  accompanied  by  some  Nonconformist  minister 
who  wanted,  but  could  not  afford,  a  holiday.  Already, 
long  before  official  position  had  made  it  worth  his  while 
to  court  popularity  in  the  colonies,  the  peer  had  taken 
most  effective  interest  in  a  school  established  on  the 

1  As  soon  as  a  favourable  change  arrived  in  Cowper's  health,  Dart- 
mouth was  the  first  to  be  informed  by  John  Newton  that  the  Lord  was 
"  on  his  way  to  turn  mourning  into  joy."  When  Cowper  came  once  more 
to  himself,  he  found  his  shelves  bare  of  the  books,  which  had  been  sold 
during  the  period  of  his  sickness  and  poverty.  Dartmouth's  library  then 
supplied  him  with  the  volumes  of  travels  over  the  study  of  which  his  mind 
regained  its  strength,  and  acquired  a  cheerfulness  that  endured  long 
enough  to  depict  itself  for  our  delight  in  indelible  colours  before  it  once 
again  was  overclouded. 


Il8  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

New  Hampshire  frontier  for  the  conversion  and  civilisa- 
tion of  the  Indians :  a  school  which,  as  time  went  on, 
and  his  benefactions  multiplied,  received  the  name  of 
Dartmouth  College.  In  1771  he  invited  the  co-opera- 
tion of  the  Bishop  of  London,  and  received  a  reply  of  a 
nature  which  goes  further  to  illustrate  the  inward 
causes  of  the  American  troubles  than  many  ponderous 
volumes  of  minutes  and  reports.  The  Bishop,  (so  the 
answer  ran,)  had  received  no  intimation  that  the  Head 
of  the  College  was  to  belong  to  the  Church  of  England, 
or  that  the  prayers  to  be  used  were  those  of  the  Liturgy. 
The  other  members  of  the  Board,  his  Lordship  further 
remarked,  appeared  to  be  Dissenters,  and  he  therefore 
could  not  see  how  a  bishop  could  be  of  use  among  them, 
and  accordingly  begged  to  decline  the  honour  which 
the  trustees  had  done  him.  The  Bishop  altogether  ig- 
nored the  circumstance  that  members  of  the  Church  of 
England  were  the  Dissenters  in  Massachusetts ;  and 
that,  at  the  very  outside,  they  numbered  only  one-fif- 
teenth of  the  population.  Dartmouth,  however,  was  well 
aware  that  a  religious  undertaking  in  New  England,  if 
Congregationalists  and  Presbyterians  were  kept  out  of  it, 
could  not  be  expected  to  overflow  with  vitality ;  and,  in 
face  of  the  Bishop  of  London's  disapproval,  he  continued 
to  be  President  of  the  Board. 

The  colonists  saw  that  Dartmouth  understood  their 
ways,  and  was  at  one  with  them  on  matters  which  he 
regarded  as  infinitely  higher  and  more  important  than 
any  political  differences.  Whether  he  was  in  or  out  of 
office,  —  when  he  was  advocating  their  cause,  and  when, 
in  obedience  to  worse  and  stronger  men  than  himself, 
he  was  doing  his  utmost  to  ruin  it,  —  they  persisted  in 
looking  on  him  as  a  friend  at  heart.  Virginia  and  New 
York  addressed  to  him  their  felicitations  on  the  repeal 
of  the  Stamp  Act,  accompanied,  among  other  less 
romantic  presents,  by  a  young  eaglet ;  at  whose  full- 
grown  claws  and  beak,  in  coming  years,  he  must  have 
looked  with  mingled  feelings  when  he  paid  a  visit  to  his 
aviary.  On  the  occasion  of  the  Boston  massacre  of 


BURKE  AND    THE    WHIGS  119 

March  1770  the  popular  leaders  transmitted  to  Dart- 
mouth a  full  account  of  their  proceedings,  as  to  an 
honest  man  who  would  take  care  that  their  statement  of 
the  case  should  be  known  at  Court.  When,  in  August, 
1772,  he  was  appointed  Secretary  of  the  Colonies,  the 
news  was  hailed  with  satisfaction  throughout  America 
by  people  of  all  parties ;  and  as  months  rolled  on,  and 
the  plot  thickened,  every  post  brought  him  more  valu- 
able testimonies  of  affection  and  confidence  in  the  shape 
of  letters  of  counsel  from  the  most  unlikely  quarters. 
Good  men,  even  from  among  the  ranks  of  those  whom 
he  never  without  a  twinge  could  call  rebels,  dared  to 
write  him  their  true  thoughts,  and  cared  to  do  it.  When 
he  allowed  himself  to  become  the  instrument  of  an  hos- 
tility which  was  foreign  to  his  nature,  —  and,  it  is  to  be 
feared,  not  consonant  with  his  opinions,  —  they  dimin- 
ished something  from  their  respect,  but  he  always 
retained  their  love.  Two  generations  afterwards,  in 
the  July  of  1829,  the  citizens  of  New  York  asked  leave 
to  detain  his  portrait,  then  on  its  way  from  England  to 
the  College  which  bore  his  name.  The  request  was 
granted  ;  and  they  placed  the  picture  in  their  Hall  of 
Justice,  next  those  of  Washington  and  Franklin,  on  the 
day  of  the  Celebration  of  Independence.  If  Dartmouth 
could  have  ruled  the  colonies  according  to  the  dictates 
of  his  own  judgement  and  his  own  conscience,  that  In- 
dependence would  have  been  postponed  till  he  had 
ceased  to  be  Secretary  of  State;  and,  whenever  it 
arrived,  it  would  have  excited  very  different  feelings 
and  recollections  from  those  with  which  it  was  destined 
to  be  associated. 

Among  men  of  our  race,  in  every  quarter  of  the  globe, 
and  under  every  form  of  government,  as  soon  as  a  pub- 
lic danger  is  clearly  recognised,  some  one  will  be  found 
to  face  it.  The  undisguised  tyranny  of  the  Stuarts  in 
the  seventeenth  century  had  worked  its  own  cure  by  the 
sturdy  opposition  which  it  evoked  from  all  classes,  and 
almost  every  creed.  By  the  time  George  the  Third  had 


120  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

(been  on  the  throne  ten  years,  there  were  no  two  opinions 
among  politicians  about  the  righteousness  and  wisdom 
of  the  Revolution  of  1688.  To  hear  them  talk,  they 
were  all  Whigs  together;  but  meanwhile,  under  their 
eyes,  and  with  their  concurrence,  a  despotism  of  a  subtle 
and  insidious  texture  was  being  swiftly  and  deftly  inter- 
woven into  the  entire  fabric  of  the  Constitution.  The 
strong  will,  the  imperious  character,  and  the  patient, 
unresting  industry  of  the  King,  working  through  sub- 
servient Ministers  upon  a  corrupt  Parliament,  had  made 
him  master  of  the  State  as  effectively,  and  far  more  se- 
curely7  tTiah  If  his  authority  had  rested  on  the  support 
of  an  army  of  foreign  mercenaries.  The  purpose  to 
which  he  was  capable  of  putting  his  all" but  unlimited 
authority  was  soon  to  be  written  in  blood  and  fire  over 
the  face  of  the  globe  ;  but  already  there  was  a  man  who, 
.  from  his  reading  of  history,  his  knowledge  of  human 
nature,  and  his  experience  of  what  politics  had  become 
since  the  new  policy  began  to  be  inaugurated,  foresaw 
the  consequences  which  could  not  fail  to  result  from  the 
t  establishment  of  absolute  power. 

That  man  was  Edmund  Burke,  who  for  some  time 
past  had  been  looking  about  him  in  search  of  forces  able 

I  to  make  good  a  resistance  which  he  himself,  at  any  per- 
sonal hazard  whatever,  was  resolved  to  offer.  He  hoped 
little  from  the  people.  Even  if  the  public  at  large  had 
been  awake  to  what  was  going  on,  and  had  cared  to  stop 
it,  all  effort  in  that  direction  would  have  been  sorely 
hampered  by  the  trammels  of  the  system  under  which 
Parliament  was  then  chosen.  Free  electoral  bodies  ex- 
isted in  most  of  the  counties  of  England,  and  in  some 
of  her  great  cities  ;  but  those  bodies  could  do  little,  how- 
ever strongly  they  might  desire  to  make  their  influence 
felt.  They  were  overweighted  and  overborne  by  the 
three  hundred  and  sixty  members  for  boroughs  in  the 
hands  of  private  patrons  or  of  the  Treasury  itself,  and 
by  Scotland,  which  was  one  close  constituency  returning 
fifty  so-called  representatives.  In  truth,  however,  the 
opinion  of  the  country  was  asleep ;  and  those  who  were 


BURKE  AND    THE    WHIGS 


121 


most  anxious  to  arouse  it,  in  despondent  moments,  were 
inclined  to  pronounce  it  dead.  "  As  to  the  good  people 
of  England,"  said  Burke,  "  they  seem  to  partake  every 
day,  more  and  more,  of  the  character  of  that  administra- 
tion which  they  have  been  induced  to  tolerate.  I  am 
satisfied  that,  within  a  few  years,  there  has  been  a  great 
change  in  the  national  character.  We  seem  no  longer 
that  eager,  inquisitive,  jealous,  fiery  people  which  we 
have  been  formerly,  and  which  we  have  been  a  very 
short  time  ago.  No  man  commends  the  measures  which 
have  been  pursued,  or  expects  any  good  from  those 
which  are  in  preparation ;  but  it  is  a  cold,  languid 
opinion,  like  what  men  discover  in  affairs  that  do  not 
concern  them.  It  excites  to  no  passion.  It  prompts  to 
no  action."1 

Despairing  of  the  mass,  Burke  turned  to  individuals ; 
and  he  found  his  recruits  for  the  party  of  independence 
and  purity  among  the  most  exalted  and  wealthy  of  the 
land.  He  argued,  (and  there  was  reason  for  it,)  that  a 
sense  of  public  duty  must  be  founded  on  a  consciousness 
oT  public  responsibility.  Thousands  of  honest  votes, 
cast  in  the  polling  booths  of  Yorkshire  and  Somerset- 
shire, went  for  no  more  than  the  voice  of  a  constituency 
the  whole  of  which  could  sit  round  one  table  within 
reach  of  the  same  haunch  of  venison.  The  average 
elector,  when  once  that  knowledge  had  been  brought 
home  to  him,  did  not  care  to  inform  himself  minutely 
about  affairs  of  State,  a  share  in  the  control  of  which 
was  so  capriciously  and  unequally  distributed.  But  it 
was  another  matter  with  those  who  were  born  to  govern. 
The  peer  with  an  hereditary  seat  in  that  House  which 
then  afforded  almost  as  good  a  platform  for  an  orator  as 
the  other,  and  a  still  more  advantageous  starting-point 
for  an  administrator;  the  young  man  of  fortune,  who 
had  only  to  choose  the  borough  for  his  money,  as  his 
brother  in  orders  would  choose  a  living,  or  his  brother 
in  the  army  a  regiment ;  the  great  landowner,  whom  the 
freeholders  trusted  and  liked  as  a  country  neighbour, 
1  Letter  to  Lord  Rockingham  ;  August  23,  1775. 


122 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 


without  very  close  inquiry  into  the  side  which  he  took 
in  the  squabbles  and  intrigues  among  which  he  had  to 
shape  his  course  at  Westminster ; — these  were  men  who 
had  leisure  for  public  affairs,  who  could  influence  their 
direction  and  their  issue,  and  who  had  the  deepest  in- 
terest in  understanding  them.  The  nature  and  extent  of 
that  interest  Burke  explained  in  a  fine  lesson,  couched 
under  the  form^of" flattery,  and  addressed  to  a  disciple 
who  was  soon  to  improve  upon  the  teaching  of  his 
master.  "  Persons  in  your  station  of  life,"  he  wrote  to 
the  Duke  of  Richmond,  "ought  to  have  long  views. 
You,  if  you  are  what  you  ought  to  be,  are  in  my  eyes 
the  great  oaks  that  shade  a  country  and  perpetuate 
your  benefits  from  generation  to  generation.  The  im- 
mediate power  of  a  Duke  of  Richmond,  or  a  Marquis  of 
Rockingham,  is  not  so  much  of  moment ;  but  if  their 
conduct  and  example  hand  down  their  principles  to  their 
successors,  then  their  houses  become  the  public  reposi- 
tories and  offices  of  record  for  the  Constitution  :  not  like 
the  Tower,  or  Rolls  Chapel,  where  it  is  searched  for,  and 
sometimes  in  vain,  in  rotten  parchments  under  dripping 
and  perishing  walls ;  but  in  full  vigour,  and  acting  with 
vital  energy  and  power,  in  the  character  of  the  leading 
men  and  natural  interests  of  the  country."  Such,  and 
so  very  far  from  democratic,  was  the  origin  of  the  party 
which  from  that  time  onward  fought  the  battle  of  liberal 
principles  in  Parliament. 

When  tidings  of  popular  violence,  most  exasperating 
to  the  English  mind,  arrived  from  America,  a  grave 
responsibility  devolved  upon  statesmen  who  were  out 
of  office  ;  for,  —  with  all  who  were  prudent  in  the  Minis- 
try cowed  and  silent,  and  its  reckless  members  dom- 
inant and  noisy,  —  the  nation,  at  this  supreme  moment, 
was  likely  to  be  ill  piloted.  More  often  than  appears  on 
the  face  of  history,  a  Cabinet  has  been  saved  from  the 
full  consequences  of  its  own  policy  by  an  Opposition 
which  did  not  shrink  from  the  labour,  and  the  odium,  of 
preventing  the  men  in  power  from  effecting  all  the  mis- 
chief upon  which  their  minds  were  set ;  but  such  a  task, 


BVRKE  AND    THE    WHIGS  12$ 

the  most  invidious  which  can  fall  within  the  sphere  of 
public  duty,  requires  something  more  for  its  successful 
performance  than  patriotic  impulses  and  good  inten- 
tions. Unfortunately  those  honourable  and  seemly 
political  commodities  now  constituted  nearly  the  whole 
stock  in  trade  of  the  peers  and  county  members  who 
watched  and  criticised  the  Government.  As  Ministers, 
eight  years  before,  they  had  done  their  duty  faithfully 
and  well  during  the  brief  period  which  elapsed  between 
the  moment  when  the  King  had  no  choice  but  to  accept 
their  services,  and  the  moment  when  he  first  could  find 
a  pretext  for  dispensing  with  them.  Burke's  "  Short' 
Account  of  a  Short  Administration  "  set  torth,  with  the 
unadorned  fidelity  of  an  inventory,  the  catalogue  of  per- 
formances which  Lord  Rockingham  and  his  colleagues 
had  packed  into  the  compass  of  one,  year  and  twenty 
days.  In  tastes,  in  character,  and  in  worldly  position 
these  men  were  suited  to  use  power  well,  and  to  aban- 
don it  cheerfully  as  soon  as  they  were  unable  any 
longer  to  employ  it  for  the  advantage  of  the  country ; 
but  they  were  not  equally  inclined  to  conduct,  year  in 
anthyear  out,  the  thankless  and  hopeless  battle  against 
able  and  unscrupulous  opponents  who  were  fighting  like 
irritated  bulldogs  in  defence  of  their  salaries.  For  true 
gentlemen,  (and'  such  the  Rockinghams  were,)  the  pros- 
pect before  them  was  not  enticing.  The  best  they 
could  anticipate  was  to  spend  years  in  being  bantered 
by  Rigby,  and  brow-beaten  by  Thurlow,  and  denounced 
as  traitors  by  Wedderburn  for  expressing  in  mild  terms 
their  sympathy' with  a  cause  which  in  former  days  he 
had  almost  contrived  to  bring  into  disrepute  by  the  vio- 
lence with  which  he  had  advocated  it.  And  at  the  end 
of  those  years  they  might,  as  the  crown  of  success,  be 
able  to  force  themselves  into  the  counsels  of  a  monarch 
who  hated  them,  and  who  treated  them  as  none  among 
them  would  have  treated  the  humblest  of  their  depen- 
dents and  retainers. 

The  Whig   magnates,  while   they  had  little  to  gain 
from  a  political  career,  had  in  their  own  opinion  almost 


124  THE   AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

everything  to  lose.  In  that  age  of  enjoyment  they  held 
the  best  seats  in  the  theatre  of  life  ;  and  their  notions 
of  pleasure  squared,  even  less  than  those  of  most  men, 
with  the  conditions  under  which  hard  public  work  is 
done.  There  were  politicians  for  whom  the  sweetest 
hours  of  the  twenty-four  began  when  the  rattle  of  the 
coaches  up  St.  James  Street  told  that  the  House  of 
Commons  was  no  longer  sitting,  and  ended  when  they 
were  helped  into  their  beds  by  daylight; — in  whose 
eyes  Ranelagh  surpassed  all  the  gardens  of  Chatsworth, 
and  the  trees  in  the  Mall  were  more  excellent  than  the 
elms  at  Althorp  or  the  oaks  of  Welbeck.  But  Rock- 
ingham  and  his  followers  loved  the  country  ;  and  there 
were  few  amongst  them  who  did  not  possess  plenty  of 
it  to  love.  Assembling  for  business  in  a  November  fog, 
and  wrangling  on  until  a  June  sun  shone  reproachfully 
through  the  windows,  seemed  a  doubtful  form  of  happi- 
ness even  to  Gibbon,  whose  conceptions  of  rustic  soli- 
tude did  not  go  beyond  a  cottage  at  Hampton  Court 
during  the  summer  months.  But  to  haunt  London 
when  the  thorns  were  red  and  white,  and  the  syringas 
fragrant,  or  when  the  hounds  were  running  over  the 
Yorkshire  pastures,  and  the  woodcocks  were  gathering 
in  the  Norfolk  copses  ;  to  debate  amidst  clamour,  and 
vote  in  a  lobby  where  there  was  hardly  space  to  stand, 
with  the  hope  that  at  some  unknown  point  in  the  future 
he  might  draw  salary  for  a  few  quarter  days,  —  was  not 
a  career  to  the  mind  of  a  great  landowner  who  seldom 
got  as  much  sport  and  fresh  air  as  he  could  wish,  and 
who,  since  he  had  outgrown  the  temptations  of  the 
card-table,  had  never  known  what  it  was  to  spend  half 
his  income. 

In  the  spring  of  1774  the  Opposition  retained  very 
little  hold  on  Parliament,  and  still  less  on  the  country. 
Their  impotence  was  the  constant  theme  of  every  one 
who  was  their  well-wisher,  and  who  would  have  been 
their  supporter  if  they  had  provided  him  with  anything 
to  support.  Their  supine  attitude  was  noticed  with  de- 
light and  exultation  in  the  private  letters  of  their  adver- 


BURKE  AND    THE    WHIGS  12$ 

saries,  who  were  however  far  too  judicious  to  taunt  them 
with  it  in  public ;  and  among  themselves  it  formed  an 
unfailing  subject  of  mutual  confession  and  expostulation. 
For  years  together,  both  before  and  after  the  outbreak 
of  the  American  War,  the  comments  of  Londoners  who 
kept  their  friends  at  a  distance  informed  of  what  was 
doing  at  Westminster  are  all  in  the  same  strain.  "  I 
wish  I  could  send  you  some  news,"  wrote  Lord  Town- 
shend  in  1772  ;  "but  all  is  dull  and  the  town  thin.  The 
Opposition,  poor  souls  who  can  do  no  harm,  (the  Dukes 
of  Richmond,  Devonshire,  and  Portland  excepted,)  seem 
to  have  left  the  nation  entirely  to  this  wicked  Ministry." 
"Lord  North,"  said  Sir  George  Macartney  in  1773, 
"  has  had  a  wonderful  tide  of  success,  and  there  does 
not  seem  anything  likely  to  interrupt  it.  Opposition  is 
growing  ridiculous  and  contemptible,  and  'tis  now  said 
that  after  this  Session  Lord  Rockingham  will  give  it 
up." 

The  colonial  difficulty,  instead  of  bracing  the  sinews 
of  the  Opposition,  only  made  them  more  conscious  of 
their  own  helplessness.  The  Duke  of  Richmond,  who 
was  the  fighting  man  of  the  party  in  the  Lords,  admitted 
in  March  1775  that  he  felt  very  languid  about  the 
American  business ;  that  he  saw  no  use  in  renewing 
efforts  which  invariably  failed;  and  that,  in  his  view, 
nothing  would  restore  common-sense  to  the  country 
except  the  dreadful  consequences  which  must  follow 
from  what  he  called  the  diabolical  policy  on  which  it 
was  embarked.1  Horace  Walpole,  an  honest  and  anx- 
ious patriot  beneath  all  his  fashionable  gossip  and  anti- 
quarian frippery,  thus  wound  up  a  long  series  of  passages 
reflecting  on  the  degeneracy  of  the  party  which  pro- 
fessed to  withstand  the  Court.  "  I  would  lay  a  wager 
that  if  a  parcel  of  schoolboys  were  to  play  at  politicians, 

1  Samuel  Curwen,  a  Tory  exile  who  had  fled  across  the  Atlantic  in  what 
may  be  described  as  the  First  Emigration,  comforted  his  fellow-Loyalists, 
whom  he  had  left  behind  him  in  America,  with  assurances  that  the  Oppo- 
sition in  the  British  Parliament  was  too  inconsiderable  in  numbers,  influ- 
ence, and  activity  to  hinder  the  plans  of  the  Administration  for  restoring 
order  in  New  England. 


126 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 


the  children  that  should  take  the  part  of  the  Opposition 
would  discover  more  spirit  and  sense.  The  cruellest 
thing  that  has  been  said  of  the  Americans  by  the  Court 
is  that  they  were  encouraged  by  the  Opposition.  You 
might  as  soon  light  a  fire  with  a  wet  dishclout." 

Epithet  for  epithet,  the  retrospective  loyalty  due  from 
Liberals  to  a  former  chief  of  their  party  would  incline 
them  to  compare  Lord  Rockingham  to  a  nobler  article 
of  domestic  use  than  that  which  suggested  itself  to  Hor- 
ace Walpole ;  but  a  wet  blanket  he  certainly  must  be 
called.  He  was  the  most  exalted  instance  in  Parlia- 
mentary history  of  the  force  of  Burke's  maxim  that  a 
habit  of  not  speaking  at  all  grows  upon  men  as  fast  as 
a  habit  of  speaking  ill,  and  is  as  great  a  misfortune. 
To  the  end  of  his  days,  whenever  Rockingham  had 
mustered  courage  to  open  his  mouth  in  public,  he  was 
congratulated  as  if  he  had  been  a  young  County  Mem- 
ber who  had  moved  the  Address,  without  breaking  down, 
on  the  first  day  of  his  first  Parliament.  "  It  gave  me 
great  pleasure,"  wrote  the  Duke  of  Richmond  in  1769, 
"  to  hear  that  you  had  exerted  yourself  to  speak  in  the 
House ;  and  I  am  particularly  pleased  that  you  returned 
to  the  charge  on  the  second  day,  and  replied :  for  it 
gives  me  hopes  that  you  will  get  rid  of  that  ill-placed 
timidity  which  has  hitherto  checked  you.  Be  assured, 
you  cannot  speak  too  often.  Practice  will  make  it  easy 
to  you."  It  was  a  curious  way  of  writing  to  a  man  who 
had  already  been  Prime  Minister. 

If  in  the  Lords  the  Opposition  had  a  leader  whose 
heart  sank  within  him  whenever  he  gave  the  word  of 
command,  the  Opposition  in  the  Commons  had  to  do  as 
they  best  could  without  any  leader  whatsoever.  They 
came  to  the  House,  as  Burke  ruefully  expressed  it,  to 
'  dispute  among  themselves,  to  divert  the  Ministry,  and 
to  divide  eight  and  twenty.  There  was  indeed  always 
Burke,  who  during  a  quarter  of  a  century  adorned  and 
illustrated  the  cause  of  freedom ;  and  who,  when  in  his 
declining  years  he  exerted  his  eloquence  against  the 
French  Revolution,  led,  or  rather  drove,  the  House  of 


BURKE  AND    THE    WHIGS  12  J 

Commons  and  the  Government,  and  the  country  too. 
But  his  merits  and  his  failings  alike  disqualified  him  to 
be  the  titular  head  of  one  of  the  great  parties  in  the 
fastidious  and  aristocratic  Parliaments  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  He  had  some  of  the  faults  of  his  time,  and 
some  of  the  defects  which  are  popularly  imputed  to  his 
place  of  birth.  He  wanted  self-control  in  debate ;  and 
he  seldom  observed  a  sense  of  proportion  either  in  the 
length  of  his  speeches,  or  in  the  size  and  colour  of  his 
rhetorical  figures.  There  are  passages  in  Burke,  rich 
to  gaudiness  and  audacious  almost  to  crudity,  which  are 
equally  astonishing  when  we  reflect  that  a  human  im- 
agination was  capable  of  producing  them  without  pre- 
vious study,  and  when  we  remember  that  they  were 
spoken,  in  the  actual  words  which  we  now  read,  to  a 
House  of  Commons  waiting  for  its  dinner  or,  (more 
inconceivable  still,)  to  a  House  of  Commons  that  had 
dined.1  He  lived  beyond  his  means,  and  was  far  too 
much  in  the  company  of  relatives  who  were  not  particu- 
lar as  to  the  methods  by  which  they  endeavoured  to  fill 
their  empty  purses  ;  but  that  circumstance  in  itself  should 
have  been  no  bar  to  the  favour  of  an  Assembly  where 
the  receipt  for  mending  an  impaired  fortune  was  to  sell 
votes  for  allotments  in  government  loans,  and  for  shares 
in  government  contracts.  The  unpardonable  sin  of 
Edmund  Burke  was  that  he  owed  his  position  in  the 
political  world  to  nothing  except  his  industry  and  his 
genius. 

He  knew  his  place ;  and  if  he  ever  forgot  it,  there 
were  those  at  hand  who  made  it  a  matter  of  conscience 

1  In  1770,  when  arguing  for  an  inquiry  into  the  administration  of  the 
law  of  libel,  Burke  thus  expressed  his  want  of  confidence  in  the  Judges  : 
"The  lightning  has  pierced  their  sanctuary,  and  rent  the  veil  of  their 
temple  from  the  top  even  to  the  bottom.  Nothing  is  whole,  nothing  is 
sound.  The  ten  tables  of  the  law  are  shattered  and  splintered.  The  Ark 
of  the  Covenant  is  lost,  and  passed  into  the  hands  of  the  uncircumcised. 
Both  they  and  ye  are  become  an  abomination  unto  the  Lord.  In  order  to 
wash  away  your  sins,  let  Moses  and  the  prophets  ascend  Mount  Sinai,  and 
bring  us  down  the  second  table  of  the  law  in  thunders  and  lightnings  ;  for 
in  thunders  and  lightnings  the  Constitution  was  first,  and  must  now,  be 
established." 


I 


128 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 


to  deal  with  him  faithfully.  He  left  among  his  papers 
a  noble  composition  which,  if  it  had  been  a  fifth  of  the 
length  that  it  is.  would  have  been  as  widely  admired  as 
Dr.  Johnson's  reply  to  Lord  Chesterfield.  It  was  the 
draft  answer  to  a  letter  from  Dr.  Markham,  the  Bishop 
of  Chester,  and  tutor  to  the  Prince  of  Wales.  Markham 
had  taken  upon  himself  to  reprove  Edmund  Burke  for 
his  public  conduct ;  and  on  that  occasion  he  sadly  for- 
got what  was  due  to  an  old  friendship,  and  to  the  per- 
sonal claims  of  the  man  whom  he  was  addressing.  Even 
at  this  distance  of  time  it  is  impossible  to  read  without 
indignation  the  contemptuous  terms  in  which  a  success- 
ful formalist,  who  had  risen  by  worldly  arts  into  a  great 
ecclesiastical  position,1  ventured  to  upbraid  an  exalted 
thinker,  who  had  missed  wealth  and  prosperity,  for  his 
presumption  in  expressing  an  opinion  on  matters  which 
were  too  high  for  him,  and  on  people  of  a  station  above 
his  own.  The  Churchman  expressed  surprise  that  the 
member  of  Parliament  resented  the  advice  to  bring  down 
the  aim  of  his  ambition  to  a  lower  level,  and  reminded 
him  that  arrogance  in  a  man  of  his  condition  was  intol- 
erable. Burke's  conduct  was  ridiculous  folly,  and  his 
house,  "a  hole  of  adders"  ;  and,  being  what  he  was,  he 
had  the  insolence  to  ill-treat  the  first  men  of  the  king- 
dom; —  those  first  men  being  Rigby  and  Lord  Barring- 
ton,  whose  names  are  now  chiefly  remembered  because 
they  occasionally  appear  to  disadvantage  in  a  corner  of 
one  of  his  scathing  sentences.  "  My  Lord,"  was  the 
reply,  "  I  think  very  poorly  of  Ned  Burke  or  his  preten- 
sions;  but,  by  the  blessing  of  God,  the  just  claims  of 
active  members  of  Parliament  shall  never  be  lowered 
in  the  estimation  of  mankind  by  my  personal  or  official 
insignificance.  ...  If  ever  things  should  entitle  me  to 


1  In  1764  Markham  entreated  the  Duke  of  Bedford  to  procure  him 
"  one  of  the  inferior  bishoprics."  "  Whatever  preferment,"  the  Rev- 
erend Doctor  wrote,  "  I  may  chance  to  rise  to,  I  shall  not  set  a  higher 
value  on  any  of  its  emoluments  than  on  the  ability  it  may  possibly  give  me 
of  being  useful  to  some  of  your  Grace's  friends."  —  The  Bedford  Corre- 
spondence;  vol.  iii.,  p.  275. 


BURKE  AND    THE    WHIGS 


129 


look  for  office,  it  is  my  friends  who  must  discover  the 
place  I  hold  in  Parliament.  I  shall  never  explain  it.  I 
protest  most  solemnly  that,  in  my  eye,  thinking  as  I  do 
of  the  intrinsic  dignity  of  a  member  of  Parliament,  I 
should  look  upon  the  highest  office  the  subject  could 
aspire  to  as  an  object  rather  of  humiliation  than  of  pride. 
It  would  very  much  arrange  me  in  point  of  convenience. 
It  would  do  nothing  for  me  in  point  of  honour."  1 

Burke  needed  no  candid  friend  to  bid  him  take  a 
lower  seat.  The  iron  had  entered  into  his  soul,  never 
to  leave  it ;  and,  far  from  aspiring  to  the  first  place,  he 
was  well  aware  that  he  could  not  afford  even  to  be  con- 
spicuous. "  I  saw  and  spoke  to  several,"  he  writes  on 
one  occasion.  "  Possibly  I  might  have  done  service  to 
the  cause,  but  I  did  none  to  myself.  This  method  of 
going  hither  and  thither,  and  agitating  things  person- 
ally, when  it  is  not  done  in  chief,  lowers  the  estimation 
of  whoever  is  engaged  in  such  transactions ;  especially 
as  they  judge  in  the  House  of  Commons  that  a  man's 
intentions  are  pure  in  proportion  to  his  languor  in  en- 
deavouring to  carry  them  into  execution."  l  So  deeply 
impressed  was  he  with  the  preponderating  influence 
which  birth  and  rank  then  exercised  in  the  transactions 
of  politics  that  he  seriously  thought  of  inviting  Lord 
George  Germaine  to  marshal  and  command  the  party. 
At" a  very  early  moment,  however,  it  became  evident  that, 
for  people  who  wanted  to  be  taken  under  fire,  it  was  not 
enough  to  get  Lord  George  Germaine  into  the  saddle ; 
for  a  division  in  Parliament  answers  to  a  charge  in  the 
field,  and  Lord  George  had  as  little  eye  or  heart  for  the 
one  as  for  the  other.  It  soon  got  to  Burke's  saying 
plainly  and  bluntly  that,  whether  his  Lordship  concurred 
or  not,  no  human  consideration  would  hinder  himself, 
for  one,  from  dividing  the  House ;  and  the  paths  of  the 
two  men  thenceforward  finally  diverged.  The  noble- 
man took  the  road  which  led  to  place,  and  salary,  and  a 
perceptible  addition  to  the  heavy  account  which  already 

1  Burke  to  Rockingham;  January  10,  1773.  Correspondence  of  Edmund 
Burke;  vol.  i.,  pp.  276  to  338. 

VOL.  i.  K 


I3O  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

stood  against  him  in  a  ledger  of  Britain's  glory.  The 
commoner  returned  to  his  continuous,  and  at  length  vic- 
torious,  wrestle  with  corruption  in  high  places,  and  to 
his  honourable  and  indispensable,  but  obscure,  labours 
behind  the  scenes  of  the  senatorial  theatre. 

"  Burke,"  said  the  Duke  of  Richmond,  "  you  have 
more  merit  than  any  man  in  keeping  us  together ;  "  and 
none  knew  better  than  his  Grace  how  hard  the  task 
was.  The  exertions  of  the  great  orator  were  by  no 
means  confined  to  the  Chamber  in  which  he  himself 
sate.  He  counted  the  peers  as  a  part  of  the  flock  which 
he  tended  with  so  small  a  prospective  share  in  the 
profits,  and  so  exclusive  a  monopoly  of  the  toil  and  the 
anxiety.  He  wrote  their  Protests ;  he  drew  their  Reso- 
lutions ;  he  told  them  when  they  were  to  speak,  and 
sketched,  not  always  in  outline,  what  they  were  to  say. 
From  Rockingham  downwards  he  urged  on  them  the 
duty  of  attendance  at  Westminster,  putting  aside  the 
plea  of  weak  health  with  decorous  but  unambiguous  in- 
credulity. His  desk  was  full  of  pathetic  epistles  in 
which  the  fathers  of  the  Whig  party,  in  both  Houses, 
begged  to  be  allowed  a  little  longer  holiday  from  the 
public  debates,  and,  (what  in  that  season  of  discourage- 
ment and  depression  they  liked  even  less,)  from  the 
private  consultations  of  the  party.  "  Indeed,  Burke," 
wrote  the  Duke  of  Richmond  from  Goodwood,  "you 
are  too  unreasonable  to  desire  me  to  be  in  town  some 
time  before  the  Meeting  of  Parliament.  You  see  how 
very  desperate  I  think  the  game  is.  You  know  how 
little  weight  my  opinion  is  of  with  our  friends  in  the 
lump ;  and  to  what  purpose  can  I  then  meet  them  ? 
No  ;  let  me  enjoy  myself  here  till  the  Meeting,  and  then, 
at  your  desire,  I  will  go  to  town  and  look  about  me  for 
a  few  days."  Even  Savile  stopped  at  home,  for  reasons 
sufficiently  elevated  arid  disinterested  to  have  commended 
themselves  to  John  Hampden,  but  which  none  the  less 
kept  him  out  of  the  way  when  he  was -most  wanted. 
Lord  John  Cavendish,  never  good  at  excuses,  and  light- 
est among  the  light  weights  who  could  afford  to  be  well 


BURKE  AND   THE    WHIGS  131 

mounted,  was  reduced  to  admit  that  he  stayed  in  the 
country  to  hunt ;  and  Burke's  sentiment  with  regard  to 
him  was  divided  between  respect  for  his  frankness,  and 
regret  for  the  absence  of  the  keenest  politician  in  a 
family  group  who  required  no  watching  or  stimulating 
when  once  he  had  collected  them  in  London.1 

The  Whigs  defended  themselves  to  each  other,  —  and, 
when  they  dared,  tried  to  pacify  their  taskmaster, — by  the 
allegation  that  public  action  was  useless  in  the  House 
because  public  feeling  was  asleep  in  the  country.  But 
this,  as  Burke  did  not  hesitate  to  inform  them,  was  their 
own  fault.  They  were  selfishly  indifferent  about  what 
he  regarded  as  a  statesman's  primary  function,  that  of 
instructing  the  people  to  discern  and  pursue  their  own 
highest  interests.  When  it  was  a  question  of  prevent- 
ing a  rival  family  from  securing  the  representation  of 
the  Shire  in  which  he  lived,  any  one  of  them  was  ready 
to  spend  his  last  guinea ;  to  mortgage  his  home-farm ;  to 
cut  down  his  avenue  ;  to  rise  from  a  sick  bed,  (like  poor 
Granby,)  in  order  to  vote,  and  canvass,  and  dine  in  a 
stuffy  tavern,  at  an  unheard-of  hour,  in  a  company  with 
whom,  outside  politics,  he  had  not  a  taste  in  common. 
And  yet  the  same  man  would  take  no  trouble,  and  sacri- 
fice none  of  his  leisure,  in  order  to  teach  his  countrymen 
what  they  ought  to  think  about  their  own  grievances, 
and  the  dangers  and  duties  of  the  nation.  If  the  Oppo- 
sition, (so  Burke  told  them,)  were  to  electioneer  with  the 
same  want  of  spirit  as  they  displayed  over  the  advocacy 

1  The  state  of  things  was  described  by  Mason  in  a  satire  written  just 
before  the  change  for  the  better  came. 

"  For,  know,  poor  Opposition  wants  a  head. 
With  hound  and  horn  her  truant  schoolboys  roam 
And  for  a  fox-chase  quit  Saint  Stephen's  dome, 
Forgetful  of  their  grandsire  Nimrod's  plan, 
'  A  mighty  hunter,  but  his  prey  was  man.'  " 

Even  in  his  rebukes  Mason  drew  a  distinction,  creditable  to  the  Rocking- 
hams,  between  their  favourite  pursuits  and  the  recreations  in  vogue  among 
their  political  adversaries,  who,  according  to  the  poet, 

"  At  crowded  Almack's  nightly  bet, 
To  stretch  their  own  beyond  the  nation's  debt." 

K2 


132  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

of  those  great  principles  which  were  the  end  and  object 
for  which  elections  exist,  there  would  not  be  a  Whig 
member  left  in  Yorkshire  or  in  Derbyshire.  "  The  peo- 
ple," he  wrote,  "  are  not  answerable  for  their  present 
supine  acquiescence :  indeed  they  are  not.  God  and 
nature  never  made  them  to  think  or  act  without  guid- 
ance and  direction." 

But  guidance  was  impossible  when  the  guides  them- 
selves were  uncertain  about  the  quarter  towards  which 
they  should  advance,  and,  in  any  case,  were  in  no  hurry 
to  start.  As  far  as  the  supply  of  public  questions  was 
concerned,  the  party  was  living  from  hand  to  mouth, 
and  fared  very  sparingly.  Wilkes,  if  it  is  not  profane 
to  say  so,  had  in  his  day  been  nothing  short  of  a  God- 
send;  and,  to  do  them  justice,  the  Whigs  had  made  the 
most  of  him.1  But  by  this  time  the  country  was  tired  of 
Wilkes ;  and  Wilkes  was  still  more  heartily  tired  of  him- 
self as  a  public  character,  and  an  idol  for  popular  enthu- 
siasm. Nor  could  anything  be  hoped  from  a  movement 
in  favour  of  Parliamentary  Reform.  Although  the 
Middlesex  election  had  brought  strongly  into  notice  the 
glaring  defects  of  our  representative  system,  it  was 
impossible  to  unite  the  Rockinghams  over  any  propo- 
sal by  which  those  defects  might  be  remedied ;  for  on 
that  point  Burke  himself  was  a  Tory  of  the  Tories. 
Several  Whig  statesmen  had  Reform  bills  of  their  own ; 
but  whenever  they  showed  any  disposition  to  agree  upon 
a  plan,  and  to  array  themselves  in  support  of  it,  Burke 
threw  himself  across  their  path  as  an  opponent ;  and, 
like  the  conquering  brigade  at  Albuera,  his  dreadful 
volleys  swept  away  the  head  of  every  formation.  It 
was  useless  for  Savile  to  recommend  the  shortening  of 
parliaments,  or  for  Richmond  to  suggest  the  extension 
of  the  franchise.  As  soon  as  their  proposals  had  taken 

1  "The  people  were  very  much,  and  very  generally,  touched  with  the 
question  on  Middlesex.  We  never  had,  and  we  never  shall  have,  a  matter 
every  way  so  well  calculated  to  engage  them.  The  scantiness  of  the 
ground  makes  it  the  more  necessary  to  cultivate  it  with  vigour  and  dili- 
gence ;  else  the  rule  of  exiguum  colito  will  neither  be  good  farming,  nor 
good  politics."  —  Burke  to  Lord  Rockingham  ;  September  8,  1770. 


BURKE  AND    THE    WHIGS  133 

shape,  and  attracted  notice,  Burke  appealed  to  all  sober 
thinkers  to  say  whether  England  was  not  the  happiest 
of  communities  in  its  exemption  from  the  horrible  dis- 
orders of  frequent  elections  ;  and  whether  it  would  not 
be  more  in  the  spirit  of  our  constitution,  andwmore  agree- 
able to  the  pattern  of  our  best  laws,  rather  to  lessen  the 
number,  and  so  add  to  the  weight  and  independency,  of 
our  voters. 

At  last  the  Whigs  were  confronted  by  a  question 
which  aroused  them  as  their  forefathers  were  stirred  by 
the  imposition  of  Ship-money.  It  became  known  that 
the  Irish  Parliament  meditated  a  bill  laying  a  tax  of  two 
shillings  in  the  pound  on  the  estates  of  absentee  land- 
owners, and  that  the  Irish  Government,  in  sore  straits 
for  funds,  would  assist  the  measure  to  become  law.  The 
rich  Whig  proprietors  were  deeply  moved ;  and  on  this 
occasion  they  showed  no  want  of  vigour  and  alacrity. 
They  addressed  to  the  Prime  Minister  a  memorial  pray- 
ing that  the  Privy  Council  would  refuse  to  pass  the  bill ; 
and  no  abler  and  more  artful  state-paper  had  been  signed 
by  the  great  names  of  the  party  since  the  invitation  to 
William  of  Orange.  The  letter  to  Lord  North  was  even 
better  worded  than  that  historical  document  of  the  past, 
for  it  was  drafted  by  Burke  himself ;  but  all  the  consid- 
erations put  forth  in  condensed  and  formidable  array  by 
the  most  skilful  of  Irish  pens,  employed  on  a  strange 
office,  will  not  avail  against  a  couple  of  sentences  which 
described  the  attitude  of  the  first  among  living  English- 
men. "  I  could  not,"  said  Chatham,  "  as  a  peer  of  Eng- 
land, advise  the  King  to  reject  a  tax  sent  over  here  as 
the  genuine  desire  of  the  Commons  of  Ireland,  acting  in  I 
their  proper  and  peculiar  sphere,  and  exercising  their 
inherent  exclusive  right,  by  raising  supplies  in  the  man- 
ner they  judge  best.  This  great  principle  of  the  con- 
stitution is  so  fundamental,  and  with  me  so  sacred  and 
indispensable,  that  it  outweighs  all  other  considerations."  / 
In  the  end,  the  proposal  was  defeated  in  the  Irish  Par- 
liament. The  noblemen  who  had  broad  acres  in  both 
countries  commanded  a  greater  influence  in  Dublin  even 


134  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

than  that  which  they  exercised  at  Westminster.  The 
Irish  Ministry,  who  by  this  time  had  learned  that  the 
King,  for  once  agreeing  with  the  Rockinghams,  had 
condemned  the  tax  as  "very  objectionable,"  1  fought  to 
lose,  and  with  some  difficulty  got  themselves  beaten  by 
a  narrow  majority.  But,  narrow  as  it  was,  it  saved  the 
Whigs  from  the  calamity  of  a  debate  in  the  British  Par- 
liament; a  prospect  which  Sir  George  Savile  contem- 
plated with  the  repugnance  of  a  sensible  man  who  had 
no  fancy  for  losing  his  sleep  in  a  cause  so  damaging  to 
his  party.  Little  credit,  (so  he  wrote  to  Rockingham,) 
was  to  be  obtained  out  of  a  question  in  which  it  was  no- 
torious that  they  were  all  personally  interested.  "  Hav- 
ing a  day  of  it,  as  the  phrase  is,  will  not  get  us  much 
laurels.  I  am  sure  having  a  night  of  it  will  be  worse  to 
me  than  a  land-tax."2 

The  exhibition  to  which  Savile  looked  forward  with 
just  apprehension  was  happily  averted ;  but  none  the 
less  the  Whigs  were  out  of  touch  with  the  country,  out 
of  heart  with  their  parliamentary  work,  and  of  small 
account  among  a  class  whose  adhesion  no  party,  which 
looks  to  office,  can  afford  to  lose.  Pushing  men,  whose 
prime  object  is  to  make  their  way  in  life,  whether  they 
aspire  to  be  Lord  Chancellors  or  tide-waiters,  are  apt  to 
grow  cool  in  their  loyalty,  and,  (after  a  more  or  less  de- 
cent interval,)  hot  in  their  antagonism,  to  statesmen  who 
cannot  fight  their  own  battles.  Philip  Francis  was  only 
one  of  thousands  who,  to  emplo^  his  own  words,  had 
seen  plainly  that  "  no  solid  advantage  would  come  from 

1  The  King  to  Lord  North  ;  November  23,  1773. 

2  A  London  newspaper  of  1776  related  how,  a  few  years  before  that 
date,  —  when  Irish  landowners,  and  especially  the  absentees,  were  screw- 
ing up  their  estates  to  the  utmost  pitch,  —  Sir  George  Savile  received  an 
offer  of  ;£4OOO  a  year  from  a  middleman  for  the  rents  of  an  estate  which 
brought  him  in  only  half  that  revenue.     Savile  went  over  to  Ireland,  had 
the  land  valued,  enquired  into  the  situation  of  his  tenants  and  cottagers, 
and  found  that  they  could,  without  oppression,  pay  ^2500  a  year.     He 
added  that  ^"500  to  the  rental ;   but  ordered  it  not  to  be  remitted  to  him, 
but  spent  upon  the  estate  in  building  cottages  and  farm-houses,  and  in 
giving  lime,  and  otherwise  assisting  the  industrious,  without  receiving  a 
shilling  for  himself. 


BURKE  AND    THE    WHIGS  135 

connection  with  a  party  which  had  almost  all  the  wit, 
and  popularity,  and  abilities  in  the  kingdom  to  support 
them,  but  never  could  carry  a  question  in  either  House 
of  Parliament."  England  had  seldom  been  in  a  worse 
case.  The  tornado  was  approaching  fast,  and,  accord- 
ing to  Horace  Walpole,  her  public  men  were  at  their 
wit's  end ;  which,  he  added,  was  no  long  journey.  There 
were  some,  he  said,  who  still  put  their  faith  in  Lord 
Chatham's  crutch,  as  a  wand  which  might  wave  the 
darkness  and  the  demons  away  together;  though  his 
Lordship,  in  Walpole's  opinion,  was  better  at  raising  a 
storm  than  at  laying  one.  But  it  "was  natural  enough 
that  men  should  turn  in  their  despair  to  the  imposing 
figure  of  the  old  magician,  who  had  made  the  name  of 
their  country  supreme  abroad,  and  who  had  always  stood 
for  freedom  and  justice  whenever  and  wherever  they 
were  in  peril.  Chatham  had  broadened  and  ennobled 
the  discussion  of  the  Middlesex  election.  He  had  sur- 
veyed the  problem  of  the  Absentee  Tax  from  the  point 
of  view  of  a  true  statesman.  He  had  watched  the  grow- 
ing greatness  of  the  American  colonies  with  an  affection- 
ate pride  which  he,  of  all  men,  had  a  right  to  feel ;  and 
for  years  past  he  had  been  in  favour  of  Parliamentary 
Reform.  "  Allow  a  speculator  in  a  great  chair,"  he 
wrote  in  1771,  "to  add  that  a  plan  for  more  equal  repre- 
sentation, by  additional  Knights  of  the  Shire,  seems 
highly  reasonable." 

However  much,  in  his  habitual  strain  of  stately  humil- 
ity, Chatham  might  affect  to  disparage  his  own  impor- 
tance, he  was  far  removed  from  the  modern  notion 
of  an  arm-chair  politician ;  for,  when  he  felt  strongly, 
he  was  still  ready  to  place  himself  where  hard  blows 
were  being  taken  and  given.  But  years  had  begun  to 
tell  upon  him ;  and,  when  the  occasion  came,  he  was  no 
longer  certain  of  being  equal  to  his  former  self.1  His 

1  Mr.  Joseph  Cradock  relates  in  his  memoirs  how,  on  a  day  when  the 
King  T5pT!n"e3" "Parliament,  there  was  crowding,  and  something  like  riot- 
ing, at  the  very  door  of  the  House  of  Lords.  "  Lord  Carlisle,"  said  Cra- 
dock, "  seeing  my  distress,  most  kindly  recognised  me,  and  made  room  for 


136  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

health  was  worse  than  fitful ;  and  he  sate  in  the  wrong 
House  of  Parliament  for  forming  arid  leading  a  national 
party.  Nor  must  it  be  forgotten  that  the  only  existing 
nucleus  for  such  a  party  was  the  group  which  owed 
allegiance  to  Lord  Rockingham ;  and  against  Rocking- 
ham  and  his  associates  Chatham  was"  bitterly  preju- 
diced. He  taught  himself  to  believe  that  his  quarrel 
with  them  was  on  account  of  their  moderation ;  a  fault 
which,  if  he  had  cared  to  take  them  in  the  right  way, 
he  would  have  been  the  very  man  to  cure.  But  instead 
of  trying  to  infuse  into  them  the  fire  and  resolution 
which  they  lacked,  his  mind  was  bent  on  outbidding 
and  discrediting  them.  "  I  am  resolved,"  he  said,  "  to 
be  in  earnest  for  the  public,  and  shall  be  a  scare-crow 
of  violence  to  the  gentle  warblers  of  the  grove,  the 
moderate  Whigs  and  temperate  statesmen."  That  was 
not  the  tone  which  Charles  Fox,  as  fierce  a  fighter  as 
Chatham  himself  had  been  in  his  most  strenuous  days, 
ever  permitted  himself  to  adopt  towards  men  whose 
abilities  and  virtues  he  respected,  and  whose  inertness 
and  unconcern  were  soon  exchanged  for  very  opposite 
qualities  when  once  he  had  filled  them  with  his  own 
spirit ;  and  the  hour  was  now  approaching  for  the  entry 
on  the  scene  of  that  Whig  leader  whose  exhortation  and 
example  kept  bench  and  lobby  packed  with  an  animated, 

me  between  himself  and  another  nobleman.  That  nobleman  got  up  to 
speak  ;  and  then  I  perceived  that  it  was  the  great  Lord  Chatham,  whom 
I  had  never  seen  but  as  Mr.  Pitt.  He  spoke  only  for  a  short  time,  was 
confused,  and  seemed  greatly  disconcerted  ;  and  then,  suddenly  turning 
to  me,  asked  whether  I  had  ever  heard  him  speak  before.  'Not  in  this 
House,  my  Lord,'  was  my  reply.  '  In  no  House,  Sir,'  says  he,  '  I  hope, 
have  I  ever  so  disgraced  myself.  I  feel  ill,  and  I  have  been  alarmed 
and  annoyed  this  morning  before  I  arrived.  I  scarce  know  what  I  have 
been  talking  about.'  "  Later  on  in  the  debate  a  peer  made  an  uncompli- 
mentary reference  to  Chatham.  "  He  suddenly  arose,  and  poured  forth  a 
torrent  of  eloquence  that  utterly  astonished.  The  change  was  inconceiv- 
able; the  fire  had  been  kindled,  and  we  were  all  electrified  with  his 
energy  and  excellence.  At  length  he  seemed  quite  exhausted,  and,  as  he 
sat  down,  with  great  frankness  shook  me  by  the  hand,  and  seemed  person- 
ally to  recollect  me  ;  and  I  then  ventured  to  say, '  1  hope  your  Lordship  is 
satisfied.'  'Yes,  Sir,'  replied  he,  with  a  smile,  '  I  think  I  have  now 
redeemed  my  credit.' " 


CHARLES  JAMES  FOX  137 

a  devoted,  and  an  ever-increasing,  throng  of  followers 
throughout  all  the  closing  sessions  of  the  great  dispute. 

When  Charles  Fox  left  office  in  the  February  of  17/4, 
the  first  marked  period  of  his  political  life  came  to  its 
close.  From  that  time  forward  he  moved  across  the 
stage  a  far  wiser  man,  pursuing  higher  ends  by  worthier 
methods.  An  epicure  in  history  will  regret  the  moment 
when  he  must  begin  to  take  seriously  the  young  aristo- 
crat who  hitherto  had  kept  the  world  of  London  as  much 
alive  as  ever  was  the  Athens  of  Alcibiades ;  and  the 
early  career  of  Lord  Holland's  favourite  son  will  always 
remain  an  amazing,  if  not  an  exemplary,  chapter  in  the 
annals  of  the  House  of  Commons  and  of  the  town, 
That  career  has  been  recounted  in  a  former  book  with- 
out disguise  or  palliation ;  and  an  historian  who  wishes 
to  do  his  best  by  Charles  Fox  will  preserve  the  same 
system  to  the  last.  He  thought  so  clearly,  spoke  so 
forcibly,  and  acted  so  fearlessly  that  what  was  good  in 
him  does  not  need  to  be  set  off  by  favourable  comment ; 
and  what  was  wrong  could  not  be  concealed  by  reticence, 
or  mended  by  excuses  which  he  himself  would  have 
scorned  to  give. 

When  measuring  the  extent  of  a  change  for  the  better 
in  any  given  individual,  it  is  necessary  to  take  into  ac- 
count how  much  there  had  been  that  needed  amending ; 
and  in  the  case  of  Fox  there  was  spacious  room  for  im- 
provement. Enough,  and  more  than  enough,  of  his  old 
self  remained.  It  required  all  the  discipline  of  a  long 
interval  filled  with  toil,  disaster,  and  disappointment, 
before  the  free-lance  of  the  Wilkes  controversy  had 
settled  down  into  the  much-enduring  champion  who 
stood  for  liberty  through  the  dreary  years  of  political 
reaction  which  closed  the  eighteenth,  and  ushered  in  the 
nineteenth,  century.  But  the  grave  and  fatal  error  of 
Charles  Fox's  career  belonged  to  a  period  later  than  the 
years  of  which  these  volumes  treat;  and  his  public 
action  between  1774  and  1782  will,  in  its  character  and 
its  fruits,  bear  favourable  comparison  with  an  equal 


138  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

period  in  the  life  of  any  statesman  who  in  the  prosecu- 
tion of  his  policy  enjoyed  no  power  or  influence  except 
such  as  his  tongue  gave  him.  The  contrast  between 
!  Fox  during  the  eight  years  before  he  was  five  and  twenty, 
(for  he  began  life  early,)  and  the  eight  years  after,  ex- 
ceeds anything  recorded  outside  religious  autobiography. 
That  is  a  province  of  literature  in  which,  from  Saint 
Augustine  to  Bunyan,  the  effect  of  such  a  contrast  is 
apt  to  be  heightened  by  the  author's  overestimate  of 
his  own  early  wickedness  ;  but  Charles  Fox  was  the  last 
man  who  cared  to  exaggerate  his  past  delinquencies,  — 
if,  indeed,  they  would  have  admitted  of  it.  The  differ- 
ence between  what  he  had  been,  and  what  he  became, 
was  so  great,  and  the  transformation  so  sudden,  that  it 
could  never  have  occurred  but  for  a  series  of  events 
which,  treading  with  startling  rapidity  in  each  other's 
steps,  in  their  combined  effect  were  singularly  calcu- 
lated to  chasten  and  inspire  such  a  nature  and  such  an 
intellect. 

His  political  career,  so  far  as  it  could  lead  to  anything 
which  in  the  eyes  of  his  contemporaries  seemed  worth 
having,  was  ruined.  With  his  own  hands,  to  make  sport 
for  himself,  he  had  pulled  down  the  pillars  of  his  temple, 
and  had  crushed  none  of  his  adversaries  or,  (what  then 
meant  much  the  same  to  him,)  his  leaders.  When  just 
turned  three  and  twenty  he  had  resigned  his  first  place, 
on  what,  by  a  very  friendly  interpretation,  might  be  con- 
strued as  public  grounds.  Before  the  year  was  out  he  had 
been  brought  back  again  by  a  ministerial  rearrangement 
costing  much  trouble  and  money,  and  more  scandal,  which 
had  been  undertaken  solely  with  a  view  to  his  re-enlist- 
mentinoffice.  Suchatribute  totheterrorof  his  eloquence 
might  well  have  turned  an  older  and  steadier  head  ;  and 
Lord  North  soon  learned  that  Charles  Fox,  however  far 
down  he  might  sit  at  the  Board  of  Treasury,  took  his 
own  view  of  his  own  position  in  Parliament.  Among 
the  three  recognised  functions  of  subordinate  officials,  — 
to  make  a  House,  to  keep  a  House,  and  to  cheer  minis- 
ters, —  Fox  never  failed  of  the  first  when  he  was  known 


CHARLES  JAMES  FOX  139 

to  be  going  to  speak,  or  of  the  second  as  long  as  he  was 
on  his  legs ;  but  the  only  comfort  and  encouragement 
which  his  more  exalted  colleagues  got  from  him  was  to 
find  themselves  planted  in  an  inextricable,  and  some- 
times an  absurd,  situation  whenever  it  suited  his  passing 
humour,  or  that  queer  conglomeration  of  prejudices  and 
sentiments  which  he  then  called  his  immutable  princi- 
ples. There  could  be  but  one  end  to  such  a  connection. 
Fox  was  dismissed  from  office,  without  the  consolation 
of  having  sacrificed  himself  to  a  cause;  without  a  fol- 
lowing; with  no  tribute  of  sympathy  other  than  the 
ironical  congratulations  of  an  enormous  circle  of  friends 
and  acquaintances,  who  were  only  surprised  that  the 
event  had  not  taken  place  weeks  before  ;  and,  (what  was 
the  most  serious,)  with  nothing  which  the  world  around 
him  would  call  a  hope.  He  had  sinned  against  the 
light,  —  such  light  as  illuminated  the  path  of  the  Wed- 
derburns  and  the  Welbore  Ellises  from  one  overpaid 
post  to  another.  He  had  not  learned  even  from  personal 
experience,  (what  wise  men  took  for  granted,)  how  bitter 
it  was  to  have  shut  oneself  out  in  the  cold.  He  had 
shown  that  salary  could  not  tempt  him  to  surrender  a 
whim.  What  sort  of  a  colleague  would  he  be  if  he  ever 
came  to  indulge  himself  in  a  conscience?  Above  all, 
he  had  proved  that  he  could  not  follow.  There  was 
that  about  him  which  made  it  certain  that  no  party  should 
admit  him  into  its  ranks  unless  it  was  prepared  to  be 
led  by  him;  and  in  a  House  of  Commons  where,  during 
his  career  of  joyous  knight-errantry,  he  had  tilted  suc- 
cessively into  the  middle  of  every  group  and  section, 
there  were  none  who  would  not  scout  the  notion  of  plac- 
ing themselves  under  his  banner.  His  political  pros- 
pect was  now  an  avenue  which  opened  on  the  desert  of 
life-long  opposition ;  and  if  he  did  not  know  what  that 
meant,  Lord  Holland  was  there  to  tell  him.  It  was  a 
cruel  thought  for  the  old  statesman  that  a  son  of  such 
hopes  should  already,  and  all  for  nothing,  have  made 
himself  as  complete  a  political  outlaw  as  was  the  father 
at  the  close  of  a  long  career,  during  which,  at  any  rate, 


140  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

he  had  acquired  vast  wealth,  and  had  reached  the  height 
of  power. 

The  blow  was  the  more  crushing  because  it  came  at 
the  moment  when  the  family  fortunes  paid  a  signal 
penalty  for  the  family  failings.  Lord  Holland  had  just 
brought  to  a  conclusion  the  gigantic  operations  by 
means  of  which  he  rescued  his  two  eldest  sons  from  the 
most  pressing  consequences  of  his  indulgence  and  their 
own  folly.  Stephen's  debts  were  very  large ;  but,  with 
the  best  will  in  the  world,  he  had  not  the  genius  for 
prodigality  of  his  younger  brother.  Charles,  before  he 
came  to  man's  estate,  was  the  prince  of  spendthrifts  in 
that  heroic  age  of  dissipation.  He  sate  later  than 
others  at  the  faro  table  ;  he  staked  higher ;  and  he  shut 
his  eyes  more  tightly  against  what  was  suspicious  in  a 
run  of  ill-luck  which  to  the  mind  of  the  bystanders 
required  explanation.  He  ordered  larger  consignments 
of  silk  and  gold  lace  from  across  the  Channel  than  any 
of  his  rivals  in  the  game  of  fashion ;  he  kept  a  longer 
string  of  worse  horses  at  Newmarket;  and,  above  all, 
he  raised  money  with  more  magnificent  indifference  to 
the  laws  which  govern  that  department  of  industry. 
Indeed,  with  regard  to  those  laws  he  had  his  own 
theory,  which  for  the  time  being  fully  satisfied  him. 
"I  remember,"  so  Horace  Walpole  wrote  in  1793, 
"that  when  Mr.  Charles  Fox  and  one  or  two  more 
youths  of  brilliant  genius  first  came  to  light,  and  into 
vast  debts  at  play,  they  imparted  to  the  world  an  im- 
portant secret  which  they  had  discovered.  It  was,  that 
nobody  needed  to  want  money  if  they  would  pay  enough 
for  it.  But,  as  they  had  made  an  incomplete  calcula- 
tion, the  interest  so  soon  exceeded  the  principal  that  the 
system  did  not  maintain  its  ground  for  above  two  or 
three  years." 

The  last  of  those  years  ended  with  the  Christmas  of 
1773;  and,  on  or  about  that  date,  Lord  Holland  had 
brought  to  a  close  a  minute  and  wide-reaching  investi- 
gation of  the  all  but  innumerable  claims  upon  his  chil- 
dren's honour  and  his  own  sense  of  paternal  obligation. 


CHARLES  JAMES  FOX  141 

The  chief  culprit  assisted  in  the  task  with  a  dutiful 
eagerness  which  would  have  been  more  helpful  if  he 
had  kept  a  stricter  account  of  his  multifarious  transac- 
tions. It  stands  on  something  like  record  that,  when 
Charles  had  given  in  what  he  regarded  as  a  complete 
list  of  his  liabilities,  somebody  else  brought  to  light  the 
existence  of  deferred  annuities  amounting  to  five  thou- 
sand a  year,  which  the  grantees,  on  their  part,  had  not 
forgotten.  One  hundred  and  forty  thousand  pounds 
had  to  be  forthcoming  before  he  was  free  from  debt, 
and  his  friends  from  the  bitter  anxieties  in  which  their 
affection  for  him  had  involved  them.  The  young  fel- 
lows, who  had  helped  the  two  brothers  to  raise  money, 
were  regarded  by  Lord  Holland,  for  doing  that  which 
fathers  in  all  ages  of  the  world  have  found  it  the  hard- 
est to  forgive,  with  a  gratitude  characteristic  of  the  man.1 
He  made  the  immense  sacrifice  which  the  situation  de- 
manded without  hesitation  and  without  complaint.  But 
the  shaft  had  gone  home ;  and  Charles  awoke  to  the 
knowledge  that  he  had  distressed  and  darkened  the 
failing  years,  or  rather  months,  of  a  father  who  had 
never  wronged  him  unless  by  the  extravagances  of  a 
love  which  could  not  be  surpassed.  His  sorrow  bore 
fruit  in  amended,  though  far  from  perfect,  conduct,  and 
in  self-reproach  which,  though  not  obtrusive,  was  never 

1  There  still  exists  a  paper  such  as  only  one  father,  that  ever  lived, 
would  have  dictated  without  a  thought  of  anger.  The  signature  is  that 
of  a  broken  man. 

"  I  do  hereby  order  direct  and  require  you  to  sell  and  dispose  of  my 
Long  Annuitys,  and  so  much  of  my  other  Stock  Estates  and  Effects,  as 
will  be  sufficient  to  pay  and  discharge  the  debts  of  my  son  The  Honble 
Charles  James  Fox  not  exceeding  the  sum  of  one  hundred  thousand 
pounds.  And  I  do  hereby  authorize  and  empower  you  to  pay  and  dis- 
charge such  Debts  to  the  amount  aforesaid  upon  takeing  an  assignment,  not 
only  of  the  judgments  Bonds  and  other  securitys  so  to  be  paid  and  dis- 
charged, but  allso  of  all  such  Bonds  Judgments  and  other  securitys  wherein 
any  other  person  or  persons  is  or  are  bound  or  concerned,  with  or  for  my 
said  son,  to  and  for  my  own  use  and  benefit. 

"  HOLLAND. 

"  Dated  this  26th  Novr.  1 773 
To  John  Powell  Esqr. 

at  the  Pay  Office." 


142  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

and  nowhere  disavowed.  A  year  or  two  afterwards, 
during  hot  and  grave  debate,  he  was  taunted  in  a  full 
House  of  Commons  with  having  ruined  himself  by  the 
most  scandalous  vices.  His  assailant  was  a  man  of  his 
own  standing,  a  soldier,  and,  (what  did  not  perhaps 
make  the  rebuke  more  acceptable,)  a  cousin.  But 
Charles  Fox,  —  a  master  of  retort,  and  to  whom  a  duel 
was  a  joke,  as  far  as  his  own  danger  was  concerned, — 
quietly  and  sadly  replied  that  he  confessed  his  errors, 
and  wished  from  his  heart  that  he  could  atone  for  them. 
Everything  about  Fox,  whether  it  partook  of  good  or 
evil,  was  on  a  scale  so  extensive  that  he  was  regarded 
rather  as  a  portent,  than  an  ordinary  personage,  even  by 
the  contemporaries  who  might  meet  him  in  the  flesh, 
(and  there  was  enough  of  it,)  any  day  in  the  week,  if 
they  did  not  look  for  him  too  early  in  the  morning.  It 
is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that  this  generation  —  with  its 
more  rational  habits,  and  its  less  marked  individuality 
—  should  read  of  his  early  prodigality,  his  vehement 
penitence,  his  eloquence  and  energy,  and  the  extraor- 
dinary strength  of  the  friendship  which  through  life  he 
inspired  and  felt,  as  if  they  were  the  fictitious  attributes 
of  some  mythical  hero.  But  no  one  who  has  studied 
the  letters  which  he  wrote  and  received,  from  his  boy- 
hood onward  to  his  premature  old  age,  can  doubt  that 
popular  tradition,  whatever  it  has  done  for  or  against 
Charles  Fox,  has  not  run  in  the  direction  of  exaggera- 
tion. That  he  should  have  wasted  an  enormous  fortune 
at  four  and  twenty,  and  at  thirty  have  been  contending 
on  equal  terms  with  as  masterful  a  sovereign  as  any 
who  had  ruled  in  England  since  the  Tudors,  seems  per- 
fectly natural  and  accountable  to  those  who  follow  his 
correspondence  through  all  the  stages  of  his  moral  and 
intellectual  development.  The  sprawling  boyish  hand 
gradually  acquired  form  and  consistency,  while  the 
matter  grew  in  weight  and  worth.  But  from  first  to 
last  every  sentence  was  straightforward,  honest,  and 
perfectly  clear  in  its  meaning ;  and  the  character  of  the 
penmanship,  so  legible  and  flowing,  and  so  instinct  with 


CHARLES  JAMES  FOX  143 

good-humour,  was  enough  to  put  the  most  dejected 
friend,  (and  he  had  always  a  supply  of  such,)  in  high 
spirits  by  the  very  sight  of  it.  His  early  vices  and 
follies,  and  in  after  days  the  frequent  excesses  of  his 
public  spirit,  and  the  occasional  perversity  of  his  politi- 
cal conduct,  are  all  told  with  the  joyous,  unconsciona- 
ble frankness  of  one  who  never  knew  what  it  was  to 
be  ashamed  of  that  which  at  the  time  he  was  engaged 
in ;  for  when  Charles  Fox  became  ashamed  of  any- 
thing, he  left  off  doing  it. 

The  communications  which  passed  between  him  and 
his  cronies,  during  the  period  when  the  oldest  among 
them  was  five  and  twenty,  are  such  as,  it  is  to  be  feared, 
have  often  been  indited  and  relished  by  clever  young 
men  of  fashion  bred  in  London  and  in  Paris ;  especially 
if,  like  Charles  Fox,  they  were  conversant  with  the 
temptations  of  both  capitals.  Letters  of  this  class, 
when  they  have  been  written,  as  a  rule  have  mercifully 
perished ;  but  his  celebrity  was  already  such,  when  he 
might  still  have  been  at  Eton,  and  certainly  ought  to 
have  been  at  Oxford,  that  every  scrap  of  paper  which 
proceeded  from  his  pen  was  treasured  like  the  familiar 
epistles  of  a  prime  minister.  The  most  free  and  lively 
of  the  letters  were  addressed  to  the  Richard  Fitzpatrick 
who  is  celebrated  as  the  friend  of  Fox,  and  who  merited 
on  his  own  account  more  fame  than  has  befallen  him. 

In  one  important  respect  the  memory  of  Fox  and 
Fitzpatrick  rather  gains  than  loses  from  the  outspoken 
tone  of  these  youthful  disclosures.  They  prove,  be- 
yond any  manner  of  question,  that  the  writers  were  the 
last  people  in  the  world  to  assume  a  virtue  when  they 
had  it  not.  For  that  very  reason,  when  we  come  to  the 
later  letters  which,  for  many  and  many  a  long  year  to 
come,  passed  between  the  pair  of  kinsmen,  we  have  an 
assurance  that  their  views  on  state  policy  and  public 
duty  were  heartfelt  and  genuine ;  and  they  were  views 
which,  if  ascertained  to  be  sincere,  are  to  the  immortal 
honour  of  those  who  held  them.  The  best  comment 
on  the  character  of  the  Fox  papers  as  a  whole  is  the 


£44  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

effect  which  they  produced  on  the  only  two  men  who 
are  certainly  known  to  have  seen  them  in  their  entirety. 
What  Lord  Holland  felt  is  briefly,  but  most  sufficiently, 
recorded  in  bronze  on  the  railing  which  separates 
the  Kensington  Road  from  the  grounds  of  Holland 
House :  — 

"  Nephew  of  Fox  and  friend  of  Grey, 

Be  this  my  deed  of  fame 
That  those  who  know  me  best  may  say, 
'He  tarnished  neither  name.'" 

These  lines,  almost  as  they  stand  in  the  inscription, 
were  found  after  Lord  Holland's  death  on  his  dress- 
ing table,  and  in  his  handwriting.  Charles  Fox,  how- 
ever, was  his  uncle,  and  such  an  uncle  as  falls  to 
the  lot  of  few ;  and  the  world  may  suspect  the  im- 
partiality of  a  nephew  who  resembled  him  in  his  noble 
and  amiable  nature,  and  held,  to  the  full  and  beyond, 
his  political  creed.  But  Lord  Holland  made  over  the 
Fox  manuscripts  to  the  late  Earl  Russell,  whose  stand- 
ard of  private  and  public  virtue  was  as  high  as  that 
which  any  man  has  ever  maintained  in  practice  through- 
out a  long  and  honoured  life.1  And  Earl  Russell 
revered  Fox  as  a  statesman,  admired  him  and  respected 
him  as  an  individual,  and  entertained  for  him  a  personal 
affection  which  is  rare  indeed  in  a  case  where  the  grave 
has  forbidden  the  opportunity  of  personal  intercourse 
and  knowledge. 

The  correspondence  of  Charles  Fox  may  be  divided 

1  The  quotations  in  this  chapter,  and  in  the  Second  of  the  Appen- 
dices, are  almost  entirely  from  unpublished  letters.  I  am  unable  ade- 
quately to  express  the  gratitude  which  I  felt  when  the  late  Dowager 
Countess  Russell  placed  the  Fox  manuscripts  at  my  disposal  for  the  pur- 
poses of  this  book,  and  my  pride  at  the  confidence  which,  in  so  doing, 
she  thought  fit  to  repose  in  me.  Lady  Agatha  Russell  has  done  me  the 
great  honour  of  continuing  the  kindness  which  her  mother  showed  me. 
The  letters  referring  to  the  period  covered  by  the  American  Revolution, 
though  interesting  and  important,  are  few  in  comparison  with  those 
which  commence  when  Fox  became  Secretary  of  State  in  1782  ;  which 
succeed  each  other  thenceforward  in  continuous  order  ;  and  which  supply 
the  matter  for  three  out  of  the  four  volumes  of  Earl  Russell's  Memorials 
and  Correspondence  of  Charles  fames  Fox. 


CHARLES  JAMES  FOX  145 

into  three  very  unequal  portions.  First  came  that  of 
his  scapegrace  epoch,  which  began  earlier  than  is  easily 
credible,  and  ended  far  sooner  than  is  generally  sup- 
posed. Then,  when  his  own  ruin,  and  still  more  the 
sorrow  which  he  had  brought  upon  others,  had  taught 
him  to  look  life  gravely  in  the  face,  there  succeeded 
the  period  of  eager  and  anxious  repentance.  That 
period  was  a  short  one,  for  two  reasons.  First,  because 
he  was  a  man  who,  when  he  was  minded  to  do  right, 
did  it,  and  did  not  talk  about  it ;  and  next,  because 
those  whom  he  most  warmly  loved,  and  had  most  deeply 
pained,  passed  beyond  the  reach  of  his  protestations. 
And,  afterwards,  until  his  life  and  his  public  career  were 
terminated  together,  there  followed  an  enormous  mass  of 
letters,  dealing  openly  and  copiously  with  many  subjects, 
but  with  none  in  which  he  did  not  take  a  keen  and 
unaffected  interest; — letters  clear  and  easy  in  style; 
lofty  in  tone  where  the  matter  demanded  it;  and  ani- 
mated everywhere  by  the  same  fire  which,  in  his  early 
correspondence,  was  expended  in  vivifying  less  valuable 
and  much  more  questionable  material. 

In  that  early  correspondence  not  the  least  amusing, 
and  very  far  from  the  most  unedifying,  passages  throw  a 
light  upon  the  otherwise  inconceivable  process  by  which 
a  parcel  of  boys  contrived  to  get  rid  of  several  hundred 
thousand  pounds  in  a  few  years,  without  any  of  it  re- 
maining in  their  own  circle  to  enrich  some  of  them  at 
the  expense  of  the  others.  Charles  and  Stephen  Fox, 
Richard  Fitzpatrick  and  his  brother  Lord  Ossory,  Lord 
Carlisle,  Uvedale  Price  and  Mr.  Crawford,  were  one 
and  all  men  of  strict  honour  according  to  the  code 
which  was  then  professed  in  aristocratic  circles  more 
universally  than  it  was  practised.  His  own  enemy,  in 
a  warfare  which  knew  no  truce,  each  of  them  robbed 
and  injured  himself,  and  himself  only.  It  is  true  that, 
if  money  had  to  be  raised,  and  a  name  was  wanted  on 
a  bill,  none  of  them  would  scruple  to  make  a  request 
which,  for  a  friend  to  refuse  a  friend,  was  an  idea  that 
their  imagination  could  not  even  contemplate.  But 

VOL.  I.  L 


146  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

they  would  no  more  have  cheated  at  cards,  or  ordered 
a  horse  to  be  pulled  on  the  racecourse,  than  they  would 
have  declined  a  challenge,  or  slunk  away  from  the  table 
when  the  wine  was  passing  and  the  punch  brewing. 
They  had,  however,  titled  and  be-ribboned  associates 
around  them  to  whom  the  laws  of  honour  were  even 
less  binding  than  the  Ten  Commandments.  Older  men, 
who  had  diced  and  drunk  with  their  fathers  in  the 
days  of  Carteret,  and  who  now  liked  the  lads  for  their 
own  sake,  were  indignant  at  the  treatment  of  which 
they  were  the  victims,  and  astonished  at  the  blindness, 
which  prevented  them  from  detecting  it.  But  there 
are  traces  in  his  correspondence  that  even  Charles  Fox 
was  not  so  simple  as  he  appeared.  There  is  a  very 
perceptible  distinction  between  the  tone  in  which  he 
and  his  coaevals  referred  to  those  whom  they  trusted 
as  gentlemen,  and  that  which  they  reserved  for  cer- 
tain high-born  sharpers  whom  they  made  no  pretence 
of  liking  or  respecting ;  and  whose  title  to  be  paid,  when 
they  themselves  were  in  cash,  they  ranked  far  below  the 
claims  of  a  loyal  gamester  or  a  true  sportsman,  and 
only  just  above  those  of  an  honest  shop-keeper. 

The  time  had  come,  soon,  but  none  too  soon,  when 
this  comedy  of  manners  ended,  and  the  historical  drama 
began.  It  opened  with  a  scene  of  filial  contrition  like 
that  which  took  place  in  the  room  adjoining  the  Jeru- 
salem Chamber  of  the  Palace  at  Westminster.1  The 
letters  from  Charles  Fox  to  his  mother  Lady  Holland, 
during  the  winter  of  1773-4,  breathe  the  spirit  of  the 
penitence  which  does  exhale  itself  in  words;  but  it 
was  already  fully  late  to  redeem  his  past  in  the  quarter 

1  "  If  I  do  feign, 

O  let  me  in  my  present  wildness  die, 
And  never  live  to  show  th'  incredulous  world 
The  noble  change  that  I  have  purposed !  " 

Some  passages  from  letters  written  by  Charles  Fox  to  his  mother,  after  his 
debts  had  been  paid  by  Lord  Holland,  and  at  the  time  when  her  own 
health  had  visibly  begun  to  fail,  are  given  in  the  Second  Appendix  to  this 
volume. 


CHARLES  JAMES  FOX  147 

where  he  cared  most  to  make  reparation.  That  which, 
in  spite  of  all  that  could  be  said  about  the  standard  of 
conduct  prevailing  among  its  members,  had  been  among 
the  happiest  of  homes,  was  on  the  eve  of  being  broken 
up  for  ever.  Lord  Holland  was  dying,  with  even  less 
reluctance  than  he  had  anticipated.  He  had  long  been 
pleasing  himself  with  the  reflection  that  his  departure 
would  leave  his  children  richer,  or,  (as  now  was  the  best 
which  could  be  hoped,)  less  embarrassed  than  in  his  life- 
time ;  although  he  had  shrunk  from  death  for  the  sake 
of  the  wife  who  could  not  live  without  him.  But  now 
the  long  romance,  whose  earlier  chapters,  thirty  years 
before,  had  brightened  Downing  Street  with  a  glimpse 
of  Arcadia,  and  had  forced  the  entire  fashionable  world 
to  take  sides  in  the  most  fascinating,  but  by  no  means 
the  least  perilous,  of  controversies,  was  drawing  to  an 
appropriate  close.1  The  lovers  who  had  braved  the 
Court  and  the  Prime  Minister,  and  disobeyed  angry 
parents  in  days  when  the  anger  of  parents,  who  were 
a  Duke  and  Duchess,  went  for  much,  had  set  forth  on 
their  common  journey  through  life  in  the  spirit  of  true 
fellow-travellers.  A  whole  generation  of  warm  friends 
and  implacable  enemies  united  in  admiring  and  envying 
their  devotion  and  their  constancy. 

"  Well  spring  together,  and  we'll  bear  one  fruit ; 
One  joy  shall  make  us  smile,  and  one  grief  mourn ; 
One  age  go  with  us,  and  one  hour  of  death 
Shall  close  our  eyes,  and  one  grave  make  us  happy." 

As  far  as  lay  with  themselves,  they  kept  that  pledge  to 
the  letter;  and  what  was  beyond  their  power  Heaven 
did  for  them.  On  the  first  day  of  July,  1774,  Lord 
Holland  passed  away  painlessly  and  calmly,  as  one  tired 
out  in  mind  and  body ;  and  Lady  Holland,  who  had 
long  suffered  terribly  from  an  internal  cancer,  did 
not  outlive  the  month. 

Their  eldest  son,  who  had  all  along  been  regarded 
as  the  worst  of  lives  by  those  who  had  a  professional 

1  Chapter  i.  of  the  Early  History  of  Charles  James  Fox. 

L2 


148  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

interest  in  ascertaining  the  chances  of  longevity,  died 
before  the  year  was  out.  He  left  a  young  widow, 
daughter  of  the  Earl  of  Upper  Ossory,  and  sister  to 
Richard  Fitzpatrick.  Singularly  sweet  and  refined, 
young  Lady  Holland  is  never  mentioned  by  the  auda- 
cious cynics,  who  were  the  chroniclers  of  the  day,  with- 
out a  genuine  expression  of  liking  and  esteem.  Her 
little  son,  whose  appearance  in  the  world  terrified 
Charles's  creditors  out  of  their  forbearance,  and  set  roll- 
ing the  financial  avalanche  which  nearly  overwhelmed 
the  family,  grew  up  into  the  Lord  Holland  whose  con- 
nection with  Fox  presents  an  example  of  what  the 
relations  between  nephew  and  uncle  at  the  very  best 
may  be.1  In  the  meantime,  however,  the  loss  which 
had  befallen  him  was  a  crowning  sorrow  to  the  young 
statesman.  Stephen  had  stood  by  the  brother,  of  whom 
he  was  so  proud,  in  fair  weather  and  in  foul ;  in  the 
Commons  he  had  always  zealously  adopted,  even  at  the 
risk  of  caricaturing  it,  the  policy  which  pleased  Charles 
at  the  moment ;  and  by  his  death  he  now  left  him  with- 
out a  party  in  the  Lords.  There  was  something  absurd 
about  the  poor  fellow  who  was  dead ;  but  Fox,  (as  his 
married  life  so  curiously  showed,)  did  not  insist  on  per- 
fection in  those  whom  he  loved.  Now  that  Stephen 
had  gone,  the  home  of  his  boyhood  was  desolate ;  and 
he  went  forth  into  the  world  in  a  mood  of  stern  and 
melancholy  purpose  of  which  a  twelvemonth  before 
none  who  knew  him  would  have  believed  him  capable. 
Good  resolutions  are  ill  to  keep  in  bad  company ; 
and  it  would  have  gone  hard  with  the  young  man's 
aspirations  after  better  things  if  he  had  not  cut  himself 
adrift  from  the  reckless  official  crew  who  were  enjoying 
themselves  at  their  comfortable  moorings  before  they 
started  on  the  most  disastrous  enterprise  on  which  a 
British  Government  ever  deliberately  embarked.  Of 

1  It  did  not  take  Charles  long  to  forgive  the  parents  for  the  sex  of  their 
baby.  "  My  love  to  Lady  Mary,  who  I  am  glad  to  hear  is  so  well,  as  well 
as  her  son  ;  to  whom,  now  he  is  come,  I  wish  as  well  as  if  he  had  been  a 
daughter."  —  Charles  Fox  to  Stephen  ;  December  24,  1773. 


CHARLES  JAMES  FOX  149 

the  Ministers  who  had  force,  wit,  and  spirit,  the  best 
made  no  professions  of  virtue,  and  had  a  very  easy 
standard  of  practice ;  and  not  a  few  were  as  competent 
preceptors  in  evil  as  ever  called  a  main  or  pushed  a 
bottle.  The  most  decent  and  respectable  of  their  col- 
leagues were  not  of  a  mental  calibre  to  exercise  any 
influence,  except  that  of  repulsion,  over  one  who  still 
was  at  an  age  when  the  taste  is  only  too  fastidious  with 
regard  to  anything  dull  and  strait-laced.  It  was  useless 
to  expect  that  a  youth,  who  had  taken  his  first  lessons 
in  the  art  and  aims  of  politics  from  the  inimitable  table- 
talk  of  Lord  Holland,  should  seek  an  antidote  to  such 
pleasant  poison  by  sitting  at  the  feet  of  Lord  Bathurst, 
a  very  feeble  figure  in  our  line  of  strong  Chancellors,1 
or  by  doing  that  which  George  Selwyn  would  have  de- 
scribed as  singing  psalms  with  Lord  Dartmouth.  Fox, 
being  just  what  he  was,  could  have  learned  nothing  but 
harm  from  those  whom  he  had  left  behind  him  in  office; 
and  fortunate  it  was  for  him  that  the  manner  of  his 
parting  from  them  gave  no  room  for  repentance  and 
reconciliation. 

Over  and  above  the  negative  advantage  of  being  for- 
bidden henceforward  to  look  up  to  Rigby  and  Sandwich 
as  his  models  and  his  mentors,  there  was  awaiting  him 
a  privilege  which  it  only  required  that  he  should  stretch 
out  his  hand  to  take ;  the  acceptance  of  which,  (for  he 
was  not  blind  to  his  opportunities,)  became  the  source  of 
most  that  was  gracious  in  his  life,  and  of  all  that  is 
enduring  in  his  fame.  That  privilege  was  the  personal  ' 
friendship  of  Lord  Rockingham  and  his  followers. 
Aristocrats  in  the  best  sense  of  the  word,  these  men 
were  worthy  of  their  high  position ;  and  the  more  prom- 

1  Lord  Campbell  had  a  kindly  feeling  for  the  memory  of  Lord  Bathurst, 
and  made  out  as  fair  a  case  for  him  as  the  conscience  of  a  biographer, 
versed  in  the  traditions  of  the  Inns  of  Court,  would  permit.  "  It  should  be 
borne  in  mind,"  Lord  Campbell  wrote,  "that,  as  far  as  the  public  could 
observe,  he  performed  almost  decently  the  duties  of  the  offices  in  which,  to 
the  surprise  of  mankind,  he  was  placed  ;  affording  a  memorable  example 
of  what  may  be  accomplished  by  a  dull  discretion."  —  Lives  of  the  Lord 
Chancellors,  chapter  clii. 


150  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

inent  among  them  were  marked  out  from  self-seeking 
and  dissolute  contemporaries  by  their  disinterested  po- 
litical action,  and  their  blameless  private  habits.  They 
had  no  taste  for  the  amusements  to  which  the  bolder 
and  more  important  among  the  Ministers,  even  as 
elderly  people,  were  addicted ;  and  their  repugnance  to 
such  a  course  of  life  had  almost  as  much  to  do  with 
their  estrangement  from  those  Ministers  as  any  diver- 
gence in  policy  and  opinions.1 

More  desirable  companions  than  the  Rockinghams, 
for  a  young  man  of  Charles  Fox's  character  and  aspira- 
tions, could  not  possibly  be  found.  Horace  Walpole, 
whose  testimony  as  a  witness  for  character  was  conclu- 
sive, whatever  it  might  be  when  he  spoke  against  it, 
thus  wrote  of  the  Duke  of  Richmond,  at  a  time  when 
he  was  at  variance  with  that  nobleman  on  the  two  burn- 
ing questions  of  the  hour.  "  I  worship  his  thousand 
virtues  beyond  any  man's.  He  is  intrepid  and  tender, 
inflexible  and  humane,  beyond  example.  I  do  not  know 
which  is  most  amiable,  his  heart  or  conscience.  He 
ought  to  be  the  great  model  of  all  our  factions.  No 
difference  in  sentiments  between  him  and  his  friends 
makes  the  slightest  impression  on  his  attachment  to 
them."  Of  Lord  John  Cavendish  Walpole  says :  "  I 
have  often  disagreed  with  him,  but  always  honoured  his 
integrity.  Surely  that  is  the  fountain  of  principles. 
Whatever  has  grown  on  his  margin,  the  source  has 
remained  limpid  and  undefiled."  Sir  George  Savile  has 
been  justly  described  as  the  model  to  all  time  of  a  coun- 
try gentleman  in  Parliament;  and  Lord  Rockingham's 
career  marks  the  highest  point  to  which  the  respect  and 
affection  of  those  among  whom  he  lived  and  worked 

1  Righy,  earlier  in  his  life,  was  at  the  pains  to  describe  his  nightly 
round  ;  how  he  drank  till  past  three  in  the  morning,  when,  —  finding  that 
no  one  cared  to  sit  any  longer,  except  one  man  who  could  not  sit  upright, 
—  he  went  to  the  Ridotto,  and  at  length,  most  reluctantly,  to  his  bed; 
and  how  he  was  abroad  again  in  time  for  a  cock-fight,  where  he  won  forty 
pounds  in  ready  money.  That  was  the  life  which  Rigby  formerly  led  ; 
and  in  1775  he,  and  Sandwich,  and  Rochford  led  very  much  such  a  life 
still. 


CHARLES  JAMES  FOX  1 5  I 

ever  carried  a  man  whose  health,  tastes,  and  disposition 
were  the  opposite  of  all  that  the  requirements  of  politics 
demand.  It  was  inscribed  under  his  statue  by  a  friendly, 
but  not  a  flattering,  hand,  that  his  virtues  were  his  arts. 
To  be  one  of  such  a  fraternity  was  an  honour  and  an 
advantage  from  which  Charles  Fox  had  hitherto  been 
excluded.  He  had  struck  too  hard  on  the  wrong  side 
to  please  men  who  contended  for  principle  where  he 
was  only  seeking  an  excuse  for  forcing  his  way  into  the 
centre  of  a  faction  fight.  But  when  he  had  finally  left 
the  ranks  of  that  Ministry  against  whose  example  their 
own  attitude  was  a  living  protest ;  —  when  he  stood 
alone,  unhappy  and  in  earnest,  among  the  ruins  of  his 
joyous  and  careless  past;  —  then  the  Rockinghams  be- 
gan to  watch  his  course  with  interest,  and  soon  with 
sympathy.  At  the  earliest  indication  which  he  gave  of 
a  desire  to  enroll  himself  in  their  band,  they  received 
him  with  open  arms.  He  became  first  the  comrade,  then 
the  close  ally,  and  at  length  the  adored  and  undisputed 
leader  of  men  from  whom,  in  whatever  relation  he  might 
act  with  them,  there  was  nothing  but  good  to  learn. 

The  immediate  change  in  his  habits,  it  must  be  ad- 
mitted, stopped  many  degrees  below  the  mark  of  perfec- 
tion. He  still  lived  on  credit ;  which  he  could  not  very 
well  help  if  he  was  to  live  at  all.  He  still  entered  in  the 
book  at  Brooks's  Club  his  fifty-guinea  bets  that  war  with 
France  would  not  break  out  for  two  years ;  that  Lord 
North  would  have  ceased  to  be  Prime  Minister  within 
the  twelvemonth ;  and  that  he  himself  would  be  called 
to  the  Bar  before  four  given  peers  were  all  either  dead 
or  married.  He  still  played  high,  and  long,  and  often. 
He  still  attended  race-meetings  with  a  sort  of  religious 
regularity,  and  gradually  built  up  for  himself  a  reputa- 
tion of  being  the  best  handicapper  in  England.  He 
liked  going  to  his  bed  as  little  as  ever,  though  he  con- 
formed so  far  to  the  received  theories  regarding  the 
necessity  of  sleep  that,  when  once  there,  he  left  it  later 
than  had  been  his  wont.  He  continued  to  spend  his 
waking  hours  with  those  who  enjoyed  existence ;  but  he 


152  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

did  not  distinguish,  as  rigidly  as  might  have  been  desired, 
between  the  forms  of  enjoyment  favoured  by  the  widely 
different  circles  in  all  of  which  he  was  ever  and  equally 
welcome.  His  habitual  associates  were  men  of  honour, 
and  men  of  culture,  after  the  school  of  St.  James's  Street ; 
and  as  time  went  on,  and  faction  waxed  hotter,  he  con- 
sorted more  and  more  by  preference  with  Whigs.  It 
would  be  impossible  for  a  student  of  the  exuberant  liter- 
ature which  periodically  issued  from  Brooks's  to  deny 
that  that  haunt  of  wit  and  fashion  was  no  monastery. 
Among  the  younger  members  of  the  party,  which  after 
a  time  monopolised  the  Club,  there  were  plenty  of  jovial 
blades  whose  notions  on  a  most  essential  point  of  moral- 
ity were  not  merely  defective,  but  positively  inverted. 
It  has  been  said,  without  any  great  malice  or  exaggeration, 
that  the  political  creed  of  some  of  them  began  and  ended 
in  the  preference  for  a  stout  man,  who  admired  women, 
to  a  thin  man,  who  was  insensible  to  their  charms. 

But  the  leaders  of  established  fame  and  authority 
with  whom  Charles  Fox  consulted  behind  the  scenes  on 
the  strategy  of  the  session,  and  by  whose  side  in  the 
House  of  Commons  he  carried  on  the  arduous  and  thank- 
less work  of  opposition,  were  men  whose  companionship 
was  an  education  in  all  that  was  right  and  becoming. 
Advising  with  Richmond  on  the  draft  of  a  protest  in  the 
Lords ;  arranging  with  Savile  the  list  of  Resolutions  to 
be  submitted  to  a  county  meeting;  corresponding  with 
Burke  about  the  line  to  be  taken  on  the  hustings ;  and 
then  going  northwards  to  Soho  for  an  evening  with 
Johnson  and  Gibbon,  Garrick  and  Reynolds,  at  the 
immortal  Club  into  which  the  kings  of  art  and  of  letters 
had  elected  the  young  fellow  at  a  moment  when  his  for- 
tunes were  at  their  very  lowest ;  —  such  was  now  the 
course  of  Charles  Fox's  day,  when  he  spent  it  well ;  and, 
as  he  grew  in  years,  the  time  which  he  employed  bore 
ever  a  larger  proportion  to  the  time  which  he  wasted. 
His  elders  loved  him  none  the  less  because  he  was  a 
learner  in  the  intercourse  of  society,  and  never  inten- 
tionally a  teacher ;  for  what  he  had  to  tell  mankind  he 


CHARLES  JAMES  FOX  153 

was  quite  satisfied  with  imparting  to  them  five  times  a 
week  in  the  House  of  Commons.  He  tended  steadily 
and  perceptibly  throughout  his  life  towards  higher  views 
and  quieter  ways,  until  his  sweet  and  lofty  nature  had 
lost  all  trace  of  what  had  been  disastrous,  and  nearly 
fatal,  to  him  in  his  early  circumstances  and  training. 
Before  he  was  old,  or  even  elderly,  a  moralist  would 
have  been  hard  to  please  who  would  not  allow  him  to 
be  a  good  man ;  and  assuredly  the  most  imaginative  of 
novelists  could  not  have  invented  a  better  fellow. 

Of  those  forces  which  work  for  the  improvement  of 
character  the  most  powerful  is  the  pursuit  of  an  object 
of  a  nature  to  tax  all  the  faculties,  and  fix  them  over 
a  long  period  in  one  continuous  strain  of  exertion. 
Such  an  object  awaited  Charles  Fox  outside  the  gates 
of  office ;  and  it  was  the  best  present  that  Fortune  ever 
made  him.  It  was  full  time  for  him,  —  and  for  every  ' 
one,  High  or  humble,  who  had  in  him  the  making  of  a 
true  citizen,  —  that  some  work  worth  the  doing  should 
be  set  before  them.  The  apathy  of  the  people,  which 
Burke  deplored,  was  largely  due  to  the  transient  and 
personal  character  of  even  the  most  serious  among  the 
questions  which  of  recent  years  had  divided  the  State. 
The  furious  popular  excitement,  and  the  vast  amount  of 
Parliamentary  time,  which  had  been  expended  on  the 
seating  and  unseating  of  Wilkes,  had  in  the  end  lowered 
the  tone  and  relaxed  the  springs  of  politics.  Mem- ' 
bers  of  the  Opposition  had  been  forced,  by  no  fault 
of  their  own,  to  make  a  champion  of  one  about  whom 
the  best  which  could  be  said  was  that  he  represented, 
—  what  he  did  not  possess  or  profess,  —  a  principle. 
Even  the  multitude  were  weary  of  staring  at,  and  al- 
most ashamed  of  having  helped  to  feed,  the  conflagra- 
tion which  for  eleven  livelong  years  had  blazed  and 
flickered  in  the  train  of  that  graceless  hero.  The  party 
hostile  to  the  Court  was'  now  passing  through  a  reac- 
tion akin  to  that  which  the  Reformers  half  a  cen- 
tury afterwards  experienced,  when  the  passions  which 
raged  over  the  rights  and  wrongs  of  Queen  Caroline 


154  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

had  died  away,  and  had  left  no  solid  gain  to  liberty 
behind  them. 

But  in  the  spring  of  1774  events  were  at  hand  which 
broke  the  slumbers,  and  tried  the  mettle,  of  all  true 
patriots  in  the  kingdom.  A  controversy  was  at  their 
door,  unlimited  in  its  scope,  inexorable  in  its  demands 
on  their  attention ;  and  of  all  men,  inside  Parliament 
and  out,  to  none  did  it  come  pregnant  with  greater  issues 
than  to  Fox.  It  was  fortunate  for  him  now  that, 
during  his  apprenticeship  in  debate,  the  topics  of  his 
choice  had  been  trivial  and  ephemeral;  and  that, 
possibly  by  a  wholesome  instinct,  he  had  left  graver 
problems  alone.  It  mattered  little  which  side  he  had 
espoused  on  the  question  whether  an"  unlucky  printer 
was  to  be  sent  to  jail,  or  committed  to  the  charge  of  the 
Serjeant-at-Arms ;  but  it  mattered  very  much  indeed 
that,  on  the  transcendent  decision  whether  America  was 
to  be  enslaved  or  pacified,  Fox  should  have  nothing  to 
unsay.  He  came  to  the  great  argument  fresh  and 
unhampered,  his  mind  and  body  full  of  elasticity  and 
strength.  Without  misgiving,  without  flagging,  and 
with  small  thought  of  self,  he  devoted  an  eloquence 
already  mature,  and  an  intellect  daily  and  visibly  ripen- 
ing, to  a  cause  which  more  than  any  one  else  he  con- 
tributed to  make  intelligible,  attractive,  and  at  length 
irresistible.  That  cause  at  its  commencement  found  him 
with  a  broken  career.  Its  triumph  placed  him  in  the 
position  of  the  first  subject,  and  even,  (considering  that 
his  principal  antagonist  had  been  the  King  himself,)  of 
the  first  man,  in  the  country. 


CHAPTER  V 


FRANKLIN  AND  THE  LETTERS.   THE  PENAL  LAWS.   THE 


ACTION  OF  MASSACHUSETTS. 
COMMON  CAUSE 


THE  COLONIES   MAKE 


THERE  was  one  man  who  possessed  the  talents,  the 
turn  of  character,  the  official  position,  and  the  intimate 
personal  acquaintance  both  with  England  and  America 
which  qualified  him  to  be  mediator  between  the  public 
opinion  of  the  two  countries  ;  and  he  had  all  the  will  in 
the  world  to  perform  the  office.  Out  of  the  last  seven- 
teen years  Franklin  had  spent  fourteen  in  London  as 
agent  for  Pennsylvania  ;  and  of  late  he  had  been  agent 
for  Georgia  and  Massachusetts  as  well.  The  ambassa- 
dors accredited  to  St.  James's  from  foreign  Courts 
treated  him  like  an  esteemed  member  of  their  own 
body.  He  was  at  home  in  the  best  society  in  town  and 
country,  awing  every  company  by  his  great  age  and 
pleasing  them  by  his  immortal  youth.  The  ministers 
of  state,  with  whom  he  had  business,  minded  their  be- 
haviour in  the  presence  of  one  who  had  talked  with  Sir 
William  Wyndham  before  they  themselves  had  been 
born  or  thought  of.  Men  of  letters,  and  men  of  science, 
could  not  have  enough  of  the  reminiscences  of  a  vet- 
eran who  fifty  years  before  had  heard  Mandeville  dis- 
course at  his  club,  and  had  been  shown  by  Sir  Hans 
Sloane  over  his  collection  of  curiosities  at  a  time  when 
the  British  Museum  was  yet  in  the  future.  People 
hardly  remembered  that  he  was  a  colonist,  and  were  as 
proud  of  his  European  reputation  as  if  he  had  been  the 
native  of  an  English  county,  and  the  scholar  of  an  Eng- 
lish  university.  He  returned  the  feeling.  He  loved 
our  country,  and  all  parts  of  it.  At  Dublin  he  had 


156  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

been  greeted  with  the  irresistible  welcome  which  Irish- 
men bestow  upon  those  to  whom  they  wish  to  do  the 
honours  of  Ireland.  He  had  spent  in  Scotland  the  six 
happiest  weeks  of  his  life ;  and  there,  if  circumstances 
had  permitted,  he  would  gladly  have  passed  the  rest 
of  it.  And  as  for  England,  —  "  Of  all  the  enviable 
things,"  he  said,  "  I  envy  it  most  its  people.  Why 
should  that  pretty  island,  which  is  but  like  a  stepping- 
stone  in  a  brook,  scarce  enough  of  it  above  water  to 
keep  one's  shoes  dry,  enjoy  in  almost  every  neighbour- 
hood more  sensible,  virtuous,  and  elegant  minds  than 
we  can  collect  in  ranging  a  hundred  leagues  of  our  vast 
forests? " l 

He  had  long  looked  forward  to  the  evening  of  life, 
the  last  hours  of  which,  in  his  cheerful  view,  were  sure 
to  be  the  most  joyous ;  and  he  had  pleased  himself  with 
the  anticipation  of  dying,  as  he  had  been  born  and  had 
always  lived,  in  "the  King's  dominions."  But  now  he 
foresaw  storms  and  troubles,  and,  at  near  seventy  years 
of  age,  he  did  not  expect  to  see  the  end  of  them ;  as  the 
Ministers  might  read  in  a  letter  which  they  had  thought 
it  worth  their  while  to  detain  and  violate.  That  appre- 
hension lent  force  and  earnestness  to  the  efforts  which 
he  made  in  every  quarter  where  his  influence  could 
penetrate.  On  the  one  hand  he  adjured  the  New  Eng- 

1  In  our  own  time,  as  in  Franklin's,  Americans  are  apt  to  express  their 
kindly  sentiments  towards  England  in  diminutives,  like  a  Russian  who  calls 
the  Empress  his  Little  Mother. 

"An  islet  is  a  world,"  she  said, 

"  When  glory  with  its  dust  has  blended, 

And  Britain  keeps  her  noble  dead 

Till  earth  and  sea  and  skies  are  rended." 

Nay,  let  our  brothers  of  the  West 

Write  smiling  in  their  florid  pages  ; 
'  One-half  her  soil  has  walked  the  rest 

In  poets,  heroes,  martyrs,  sages.'  " 

The  verses  are  by  Wendell  Holmes  ;  and  the  idea,  or  something  like  it, 
has  passed  across  the  fancy  of  many  a  one  of  his  countrymen  beneath  the 
limes  of  Stratford-on-Avon  churchyard,  or  in  the  transepts  of  Westminster 
Abbey. 


FRANKLIN  AND   THE  LETTERS  157 

landers  to  reflect  that,  just  as  among  friends  every 
affront  was  not  worth  a  duel,  so  between  the  mother- 
country  and  the  colonies  every  mistake  in  government, 
and  every  encroachment  on  right,  was.  not  worth  a  re- 
bellion. On  the  other  hand,  he  took  care  that  any  Brit- 
ish statesman  to  whose  ears  he  could  obtain  access 
should  hear  the  words  of  reason  and  soberness  ;  and  the 
best  of  them  regarded  him  as  a  valuable  coadjutor  in 
preserving  the  peace  of  the  Empire.  Chatham,  in  the 
House  of  Lords,  openly  said  that,  if  he  were  first  minis- 
ter, he  should  not  scruple  publicly  to  call  to  his  assist- 
ance a  man  whom  all  Europe  held  in  high  estimation 
for  his  knowledge  and  wisdom,  and  classed  with  Boyle 
and  Newton  as  an  honour,  not  to  the  English  nation 
only,  but  to  human  nature. 

Most  unfortunately,  at  this  exact  moment,  Franklin   j 
became  the  centre  of  one  of   those  unhappy  scandals   1 
which  in  a  season  of  political  perturbation  are  certain    ] 
to  occur ;  and  which  are  made  the  very  most  of  by  able    . 
men  who  mean  mischief,  and  by  the  multitude,  who  do 
not  understand  the  deeper   issues,  but  can  be  voluble 
on  a  personal  question.     There  had  reached  his  hands 
a  mass  of   corresjiondence  which    proved    beyond  any 
manner  of  doubt  that  Hutchinson  and  Oliver,  the  Gov- 
ernor and  Lieutenant-Governor  of  Massachusetts,  had 
persistently  applied   themselves  to  inflame  the   minds 
of   the  home  authorities   against  the  colony,  and  had 
been  profuse  in  the  suggestion  of  schemes  framed  with 
the  object  of  destroying  its  liberties.     The  letters  were 
private ;    but   Franklin,   as    agent    for   Massachusetts, 
thought  it  incumbent   upon  him  to  send  them  to  the 
Speaker  of  her  Assembly ;  and  he  continued  to  think 
so  until  his  life's  end,  though  It  was  not  a  subject  on 
which  he  loved  to  talk.     It  is  a  sound  rule  that*  confi- 
dential correspondence  should,  under  no  circumstances 
whatever,  be  used  for  the  purpose  of  damaging  a  political 
adversary.     In  our  own  day,  private  letters  attributed 
to  a  celebrated  public  man  were  printed  in  a  great  news-    \ 
paper ;  and  the  step  was  defended  on  the  ground  that 


158  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

the  writer  was  a  public  enemy,  whose  exposure  was 
demanded  by  the  interests  of  the  State.  That  argu- 
ment must  have  presented  itself  in  its  utmost  force  to 
the  agent  of  a  colony,  when  he  lighted  on  the  discovery 
that  men,  —  born  and  reared  within  its  confines,  eating 
its  bread  and  charged  with  its  welfare,  —  had  done  their 
utmost  to  misrepresent  its  people,  to  destroy  its  char- 

[tered  rights,  and  to  bring  upon  it  the  insult,  the  hardship, 
and  the  fearful  perils  of  a  penal  military  occupation. 
And,  again,  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  sanctity 
of  the  Post  Office  was  then  a  transparent  fiction.  No 
man's  correspondence  was  safe  ;  and  those  who  suffered 
the  most  were  tempted,  when  the  occasion  offered,  to 
repay  their  persecutors  in  kind.  The  confidential  clerks 
of  the  Postmaster-General  were  sometimes  engaged 
twelve  hours  on  a  stretch  in  rifling  private  letters.  The 
King,  to  judge  by  the  endorsements  in  his  own  hand,  — 
which  marked  the  hour  and  minute  when  he  received 
each  packet  of  intercepted  documents,  and  the  hour  and 
minute  when  he  returned  it  to  the  Office,  —  must  have 
passed  a  great  deal  of  his  time  in  reading  them.  A 
politician,  when  his  turn  came  to  be  out  in  the  cold, 
recognised  the  liability  to  have  his  letters  opened  as 
one  of  the  incidents  of  Opposition,  and  did  not  expect 
even  the  p'oor  compliment  of  having  them  reclosed 
with  any  decent  appearance  of  concealing  the  treatment 
to  which  they  had  been  subjected.  "To  avoid  the  im- 
pertinence of  a  Post  Office,"  wrote  Lord  Charlemont  to 
Edmund  Burke,  "  I  take  the  opportunity  of  sending 
this  by  a  private  hand ;  "  and  Hans  Stanley,  a  public 
servant  of  considerable  note  in  his  day,  complained  to 
Mr.  Grenville  that  all  his  correspondence,  important 
or  trivial,  "  had  been  opened  in  a  very  awkward  and 
bungling  manner." 

Bold  men,  with  a  secure  social  position  and  a  touch 
of  humour,  made  use  of  the  opportunity  in  order  to  give 
their  opponents  in  the  Cabinet  a  piece  of  their  mind 
under  circumstances  such  that  it  could  not  be  resented. 
A  friend  of  George  Selwyn  regaled  him  with  a  personal 


FRANKLIN  AND    THE  LETTERS  159 

anecdote,  rather  abstruse  in  itself,  and  rendered  hope- 
lessly unintelligible  by  being  couched  in  bad  Latin.  "  I 
wrote  this,"  he  says,  "  to  perplex  Lord  Grantham,  who 
may  probably  open  the  letter."  "  I  don't  know,"  Rigby 
told  the  Duke  of  Bedford,  "  who  is  to  read  this  letter, 
whether  French  ministers  or  English  ministers ;  but  I 
am  not  guarded  in  what  I  write,  as  I  choose  the  latter 
should  know  through  every  possible  channel  the  utter 
contempt  I  bear  them."  l  But  a  system  which  was  no 
worse  than  a  tiresome  and  offensive  joke  to  men  of  the 
world,  who  wore  swords,  and  met  the  Postmaster-Gen- 
eral on  equal  terms  every  other  evening  at  White's  or 
Almack's,  had  its  real  terrors  for  humble  people.  A 
gentleman  wrote  from  London  to  New  York,  with  noth- 
ing more  treasonous  to  say  than  that  he  was  concerned 
at  the  alarming  and  critical  situation.  He  expressed 
himself,  however,  as  fearing  that  his  American  letters, 
to  judge  by  the  red  wax  over  a  black  wafer,  were 
opened  in  the  Post  Office ;  and  he  justly  observed  that 
intercourse  between  friend  and  friend  was  rendered  pre- 
carious by  such  conduct  on  the  part  of  the  authorities. 
Franklin  himself  had  the  same  grievance  against  the 
British  Government,  and  took  it  very  coolly.  Many 
months  before  the  war  broke  out  he  had  occasion  thus 
to  warn  his  sister  in  Boston :  "  I  am  apprehensive  that 
the  letters  between  us,  though  very  innocent  ones,  are 
intercepted.  They  might  restore  to  me  yours  at  least, 
after  reading  them ;  especially  as  I  never  complain  of 
broken,  patched-up  seals."  "  I  am  told,"  he  said  on 
another  occasion,  "that  Administration  is  possessed  of 
most  of  my  letters  sent,  or  received,  on  public  affairs  for 
some  years  past ;  copies  of  them  having  been  obtained 
from  the  files  of  the  several  Assemblies,  or  as  they 
passed  through  the  Post  Office.  I  do  not  condemn 
their  ministerial  industry,  or  complain  of  it." 

1  The  letter,  good  reading  like  everything  of  Rigby's,  referred  to  the 
composition  of  Rockingham's  first  Government.  "Their  Board  of  Trade," 
he  wrote,  "  is  not  yet  fixed,  except  Lord  Dartmouth  for  its  head,  who  I 
don't  hear  has  yet  recommended  Whitefield  for  the  bishopric  of  Quebec." 


160  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

Whether  Franklin  was  justified  in  his  own  sight  by 
high  considerations  of  policy,  or  by  the  bad  example  of 
the  British  Post  Office,  his  conduct  required  no  defence 
in  the  view  of  his  employers  beyond  the  water.  He 
had  intended  the  letters  to  be  seen  by  about  as  many 
pairs  of  eyes  as  those  which,  in  London  official  circles, 
had  the  privilege  of  prying  into  his  own  correspondence  ; 
and  his  object  was  to  enlighten  certain  leading  men  of 
the  colony,  belonging  to  both  parties,  with  regard  to  the 
character  of  the  Governor,  and  to  put  them  on  their 
guard  against  his  machinations.  But  such  secrets  are 
hard  to  keep  when  men's  minds  are  in  a  ferment,  and 
when  great  events  are  in  the  air.  The  Massachusetts 
Assembly  insisted  on  having  the  letters.  On  the  second 
of  June,  1773,  the  House,  sitting  within  closed  doors, 
heard  them  read  by  Samuel  Adams,  and  voted,  by  a 
hundred  and  one  to  five,  that  their  tendency  and  'design 
was  to  subvert  the  constitution  of  the  Government,  and 
to  introduce  arbitrary  power  into  the  Province.  Before 
another  month  was  out  they  had  been  discussed  in  all 
the  farmhouses,  and  denounced  from  almost  all  the  pul- 
pits. They  came  upon  the  community  as  a  revelation 
from  the  nether  world,  and  everywhere  aroused  unaf- 
fected astonishment  and  regret,  which  soon  gave  place 
to  resentment  and  alarm.  "  These  men,"  (it  was  said 
with  a  unanimity  which  the  majority  of  twenty  to  one  in 
the  Assembly  inadequately  represented,)  "no  strangers 
or  foreigners,  but  bone  of  our  bone,  flesh  of  our  flesh, 
born  and  educated  among  us,"  have  alienated  from  us 
the  affections  of  our  sovereign,  have  destroyed  the  har- 
mony and  good-will  which  existed  between  Great  Britain 
and  Massachusetts,  and,  having  already  caused  blood- 
shed in  our  streets,  will,  if  unchecked,  plunge  our  coun- 
try into  all  the  horrors  of  civil  war. 

The  sentiments  of  the  colony  were  embodied  by  the 
Assembly  in  an  address  to  the  King,  stating  the  case 
against  Hutchinson  and  Oliver  in  terms  which  cannot 
be  described  as  immoderate,  and  still  less  as  disrespect- 
ful ;  and  humbly,  but  most  pointedly,  praying  for  their 


FRANKLIN  AND    THE  LETTERS  l6l 

removal  from  office.     Franklin  placed  the  petition  in  f 
the  hands  of  the  Secretary  of  State,  for  presentation  to  \ 
his    Majesty  at   the  first  convenient  opportunity;  and  ! 
Dartmouth,  in  return,  expressed  his  pleasure  that  a  sin- 
cere disposition  prevailed  in  the  people  of  Massachu- 
setts to  be  on  good  terms  with  the  mother-country,  and 
his  earnest  hope  that  the  time  was  at  no  great  distance 
when  every  ground  of  uneasiness  would  cease,  and  tran- 
quillity and  happiness  would  be  restored. 

Dartmouth's  intuitions,  as  usual,  were  good  and  wise. 
The  opportunity  had  come  for  the  mother-country  to 
assume  an  attitude  of  true  superiority.  An  ancient  and 
powerful  State,  in  its  dealings  with  dependencies  whose 
social  system  is  still  primitive,  and  whose  public  men  are 
as  yet  untrained,  can  afford  to  make  allowance  for  faults 
of  taste,  or  even  for  breaches  of  official  custom  and  pro- 
priety. But  dignified  self-restraint  was  not  then  the 
order  of  the  day  in  high  places.  The  complaint  of 
Massachusetts  against  her  Governors  was""ref erred  to  Of/v/P' 
the  Privy  Council,  and  the  Solicitor-General  appeared  " 
on  behalf  of  Hutchinson  and  Oliver  to  oppose  the ' 
prayer  of  the  petition.  That  Solicitor-General  was 
Wedderburn^who,  before  he  joined  the  Government,  had 
toW  tnem  in  debate  that  their  policy  would  inevitably 
ruin  the  country  by  the  total  loss  of  its  American 
dominions ;  and  that,  if  for  reasons  which  could  not  be 
made  public  such  a  policy  must  be  continued,  Lord 
North  would  have  to  remain  in  office,  as  no  man  of 
honour  or  respectability  would  undertake  to  do  the 
duties  of  his  situation. 

It  was   put  about  town  that   the   famous   advocate  '  /n, 
intended  to  handle  Dr.  Franklin  in  a  style  which  would      j 
be  worth  the  hearing.     Privy  Councillors  attended  in 
such  numbers  that  they  would  almost  have  made  a  quo- 
rum in  the  House  of  Commons.     At  the  bar  stood  rows  ; 
of  distinguished  strangers,  more  worthy  of  the  title  than 
those  who  are  ordinarily  designated  by  it  on  such  occa- 
sions, for  Burke,  and  Priestley,  and  Jeremy  Bentham 
were  amongTKem.     The  ante-room  and  passages  were 

'VOL.  I.  M 


1 62  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

thronged  with  people  who  had  to  content  themselves 
with  learning,  from  the  tones  of  his  voice,  that  a  great 
orator  was  speaking  contemptuously  of  some  one.  For 
the  Solicitor  was  as  good  as  his  word.  Leaving  aside 
the  merits  of  the  question,  he  directed  against  Franklin 
a  personal  attack  which  was  a  masterpiece  of  invective. 
The  judges  in  the  case,  encouraged  by  the  undisguised 
delight  of  their  Lord  President,  rolled  in  their  seats  and 
roared  with  laughter.  Lord  North,  alone  among  the 
five  and  thirty,  listened  with  gravity  in  his  features  and, 
(it  may  be  believed,)  with  something  like  death  in  his 
heart.  Franklin,  as  a  friend  who  closely  observed  his 
bearing  relates,  "  stood  conspicuously  erect,  without  the 
smallest  movement  of  any  part  of  his  body.  The 
muscles  of  his  face  had  been  previously  composed,  so 
as  to  afford  a  tranquil  expression  of  countenance,  and 
he  did  not  suffer  the  slightest  alteration  of  it  to  appear 
during  the  continuance  of  the  speech."  He  wore  a  full 
dress  suit  of  spotted  Manchester  velvet,  which  that 
evening  retired  into  the  recesses  of  his  wardrobe.  It 
reappeared  on  the  sixth  of  February,  1778,  when  he 
affixed  his  signature  to  that  treaty  with  France  by 
which  the  United  States  took  rank  as  an  independent 
nation,  and  obtained  a  powerful  ally.  So  smart  a  coat 
attracted  the  notice  of  his  brother  Commissioners,  accus- 
tomed to  see  him  in  the  staid  and  almost  patriarchal 
costume  which  all  Paris  knew.  They  conjectured,  and 
rightly,  that  it  was  the  first  day,  since  the  scene  at  the 
Privy  Council  Office,  on  which  he  cared  to  be  reminded 
of  what  had  occurred  there.1 

The  immediate  effect  of  Wedderburn's  harangue,  as 
an  appeal  to  men  sitting  in  a  judicial  capacity,  has  in 
our  country  never  been  surpassed  ;  and  its  ultimate  con- 
sequences went  far  beyond  the  special  issue  towards 
which  it  was  directed.  Twenty  years  afterwards,  when 
Franklin's  pamphlet  entitled  "  Rules  for  Reducing  a 
great  Empire  to  a  small  one  "  was  republished  in  Lon- 
don, the  editor  paid 'to  Lord  Loughborough  a  compli- 

1  Attention  is  invited  to  the  Third  Appendix  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 


THE  PENAL  LAWS  163 

ment  which,  as  Alexander  Wedderburn,  he  had  justly 
earned.  "When  I  reflect,"  such  were  the  words  of  the 
Dedication,  "  on  your  Lordship's  magnanimous  conduct 
towards  the  author  of  the  following  Rules,  there  is  a 
peculiar  propriety  in  dedicating  this  new  edition  of 
them  to  a  nobleman  whose  talents  were  so  eminently 
useful  in  procuring  the  emancipation  of  our  American 
brethren."  * 

In  such  a  temper,  and  with  such  an  example  to  guide 
them,  the  Houses  of  Parliament  applied  themselves  to 
the  question  of  the  hour.  When  Privy  Councillors,  duly 
appointed  to  try  an  issue  in  their  judicial  capacity,  had 
laughed  the  colonists  out  of  court,  it  was  not  to  be 
expected  that  the  rank  and  file  of  a  political  assembly 
would  grant  them  a  patient,  or  even  so  much  as  a 
decent,  hearing.  England  had  open  before  her  one 
policy  which  was  prudent,  and  another  which,  at  the 
worst,  was  not  ignoble.  Clemency  and  forbearance 
were  her  true  wisdom  ;  but,  if  she  resolved  to  punish, 
she  should  have  done  so  in  a  manner  worthy  of  a  great 
nation.  The  crime,  since  a  crime  it  was  adjudged  to  be, 
was  common  to  the  four  chief  cities  of  America.  Phila- 
delphia had  led  the  way  in  voting  for  resistance ; 
Charleston  had  followed  suit ;  and  it  was  not  till  weeks 
had  elapsed  that  Boston,  on  the  same  day  as  New  York, 
adopted  the  Resolutions  which  had  been  passed  in 
Philadelphia.  Those  Resolutions  had  been  made  good 
in  action,  by  each  of  the  places  concerned,  with  just  as 

1  Nearly  thirty  years  afterwards  Charles  Fox  reminded  the  House  of 
Commons  that  fine  speeches  sometimes  cost  the  country  more  than  the 
gratification  of  '"listening  to  them  was  worth.  "I  remember  a  time,"  (he 
said,")  "when  the  whole  of  the  Privy "O>uncil  came  away,  throwing  up 
their  caps,  and  exulting  in  an  extraordinary  manner  at  a  speech  made  by 
the  present  Lord  Rosslyn,  (then  Mr.  Wedderburn  ; )  and  an  examina- 
tion of  Doctor  Franklin,  in  which  that  respectable  character  was  most 
uncommonly  badgered.  But  we  paid  very  dear  for  that  splendid  speci- 
men of  eloquence,  and  all  its  attendant  tropes,  figures,  metaphors,  and 
hyperboles ;  for  then  came  the  bill ;  and  in  the  end  we  lost  all  our 
American  colonies,  a  hundred  millions  of  money,  and  a  hundred  thousand 
of  our  brave  fellow-subjects." 

M2 


164  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

much,  or  as  little,  violence  as  under  the  circumstances 
of  the  special  case  was  needed  in  order  to  do  the  work 
thoroughly.  The  British  Ministry  should  have  resorted 
to  forgiveness  and  concession,  or  to  a  general  and  im- 
partial severity.  But  neither  of  those  two  courses 
pleased  the  King  and  his  advisers ;  and  the  opportunity 
was  taken  for  exacting  a  vindictive  penalty  from  one 
small,  exposed,  and,  (as  it  was  believed,)  unwarlike  and 
defenceless  community. 

Boston  had  done  the  same  as  the  others,  and  had  done 
it  under  the  provocation  of  having  been  dragooned,  in 
time  of  universal  peace,  for  faults  to  which  not  one 
member  of  Parliament  in  ten  could  have  put  a  name,  if 
he  had  set  his  mind  to  think  them  over.  But,  where 
antipathy  exists,  men  soon  find  reasons  to  justify  it; 
and  the  drop-scene  of  the  impending  American  drama, 
as  presented  to  British  eyes,  was  a  picture  of  the  New 
England  character  daubed  in  colours  which  resembled 
the  original  as  little  as  they  matched  each  other.  The 
men  of  Massachusetts  were  sly  and  turbulent,  puritans 
and  scoundrels,  pugnacious  ruffians  and  arrant  cowards. 
That  was  the  constant  theme  of  the  newspapers,  and  the 
favourite  topic  with  those  officers  of  the  army  of  occu- 
pation whose  letters  had  gone  the  round  of  London 
clubs  and  English  country  houses.  The  archives  of  the 
Secretary  of  State  were  full  of  trite  calumnies  and  fool- 
ish prophecies.  Bostonians,  (so  Lord  Dartmouth  was 
informed  by  an  officious  correspondent,)  were  not  only 
the  worst  of  subjects,  but  the  most  immoral  of  men. 
"  If  large  and  loud  professions  of  the  Gospel  be  an 
exact  criterion  of  vital  religion,  they  are  the  best  people 
on  earth.  But  if  meekness,  gentleness,  and  patience 
constitute  any  part,  those  qualities  are  not  found  there. 
If  they  could  maintain  a  state  of  independence,  they 
would  soon  be  at  war  among  themselves."  1  Such  was 
the  forecast  with  regard  to  a  city  whose  inhabitants 
were  destined  through  a  long  future  to  enjoy  in  quite 
exceptional  measure  the  blessings  of  mutual  esteem,  and 

1  Dartmouth  Manuscripts ;  vol.  ii.,  Letter  of  February,  1774. 


THE  PENAL  LAWS  165 

of  the  internal  peace  which  ensues  from  it.  It  was  a 
specimen  of  the  predictions  which  at  that  moment 
obtained  belief  in  Parliament  and  in  the  country.1 

The  cue  was  given  from  above.  On  the  seventh  of 
March,  1774,  Lord  North  communicated  to  the  House 
of  Commons  a  royal  message,  referring  to  the  unwar- 
rantable practices  concerted  and  carried  on  in  North 
America,  and  dwelling  more  particularly  on  the  violent 
proceedings  at  the  town  and  port  of  Boston  in  the  prov- 
ince of  Massachusetts  Bay.  The  fact  was  that  George 
the  Third  had  seen  General  Gage,  fresh  from  America  j 
one  of  those  mischievous  public  servants  who  know  a 
colony  so  much  better  than  the  colonists  know  it  them- 
selves. "  His  language,"  said  the  King,  "was  very  con- 
sonant to  his  character  of  an  honest  determined  man. 
He  says  they  will  be  lyons,  whilst  we  are  lambs ;  but,  if 
we  take  the  resolute  part,  they  will  undoubtedly  prove 
very  weak."  His  Majesty  therefore  desired  Lord  North 
not  to  repeat  what  he  described  as  "  the  fatal  compliance 
in  1766,"  —  that  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act  to  which,  in 
the  royal  view,  all  the  difficulties  of  the  present  situation 
were  owing.  The  Minister  was  directed  to  send  for  the 
General,  and  hear  his  ideas  on  the  mode  of  compelling 
the  Bostonians  to  acquiesce  submissively  in  whatever 
fate  might  be  reserved  for  them. 

1  Public  writers,  who  supported  the  Ministry,  endeavoured  to  affix  the 
sole  responsibility  on  Boston.  Jonas  Hanway  replied  to  Paine's  celebrated 
pamphlet  by  a  Volume  entitled  "  Common  Sense  ;  in  nine  Conferences 
between  a  British  Merchant,  and  a  candid  Merchant  of  America,  in  their 
private  capacities  as  friends."  The  book  included  a  conversation  which 
had  been  overheard  between  a  Shopman  and  a  Mechanic. 

"  Mechanic.    It  is  the  New  Englanders  who  make  all  the  pother  ?  " 

"  Shopman.  They  are  at  the  bottom  of  it.  I  do  not  see  what  any  of 
the  other  colonies  have  to  do  with  the  punishment  of  an  offence  which 
they  are  not  accused  of.  Their  lawful  trade  is  left  as  free  as  ever  ;  and 
of  Boston  the  punishment  was  soft  and  merciful." 

Hanway  knew  everything  about  tea,  against  which  he  was  perpetually 
railing  in  print  as  the  most  pernicious  of  all  human  discoveries.  He  must 
have  heard  how  the  East  India  Company's  ships  had  been  treated  at  New 
York  and  Charleston,  Philadelphia  and  Annapolis  ;  and  he  could  not  have 
believed  that  Boston  stood  alone  in  her  iniquity.  But  such  is  political 
controversy. 


1 66  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

The  world  soon  learned  what  was  in  store  for  the  un- 
•  happy  city.  On  the  fourteenth  of  March  Lord  North 
,'  introduced  a  bill  for  closing  its  harbour,  and  transferring 
the  business  of  the  Custom-house  to  the  port  of  Salem. 
If  the  measure  became  law,  (so  he  foretold  in  the  affected 
lightness  of  his  heart),  the  presence  of  four  or  five  frig- 
ates in  Massachusetts  Bay,  without  an  additional  regi- 
ment on  Massachusetts  soil,  would  at  once  place  the 
guilty  municipality  for  purposes  of  foreign  trade  at  a 
distance  of  seventeen  miles  from  the  sea.  Parliament 
might  well  be  flattered  by  the  assurance  that,  in  the 
evenings  of  a  week,  it  could  do  for  the  detriment  of  Bos- 
ton four  times  that  which  the  forces  of  nature  had  taken 
eighteen  centuries  to  do  for  Ravenna.  The  Government 
majority  was  in  a  mood  to  believe  anything.  One  of 
their  number,  to  whom  the  House  listened  while  those 
who  spoke  on  behalf  of  the  incriminated  town  were  in- 
terrupted or  silenced,  declared  that,  if  every  dwelling  in 
it  was  knocked  about  the  ears  of  its  townsmen,  they 
would  get  no  more  than  their  deserts.  He  urged  that 
that  nest  of  locusts  should  be  extirpated,  and  enforced 
'  his  appeal  by  the  famous  sentence  in  which  Cato  adjured 
,  the  Roman  Senate  to  demolish  Carthage.  A  poor  little 
Carthage  where  every  child  attended  school,  and  no  man 
was  a  professional  soldier  ;  with  its  open  streets,  its  un- 
protected quays,  and  a  powerful  force  of  legionaries 
already  quartered  in  its  citadel ! 

That  was  the  first  blow ;  and  others  fell  in  rapid  suc- 
cession. On  the  twenty-eighth  of  March  the  Prime 
Minister  explained  the  plan  of  a  measure  by  which  he 
purposed  to  extinguish  self-government  in  Massachu- 
setts. The  bill,  stringent  in  the  earlier  draft,  was 
altered  for  the  harsher  and  the  worse  before  it  was  laid 
on  the  table.  Lord  George  Germaine,  in  whom,  not  so 
very  long  before,  the  Rockinghams  had  been  fond 
enough  to  discern  their  possible  parliamentary  leader, 
commented  upon  the  proposal  of  the  Government  as 
well  meant,  but  far  too  weak.  He  cordially  approved 
the  provisions  by  which  a  town  meeting  might  only  be 


THE  PENAL  LAWS  167 

held  under  permission  from  the  Governor.  Why,  he 
asked,  should  men  of  a  mercantile  cast  collect  together, 
and  debate  on  political  matters,  when  they  ought  to  be 
minding  their  private  business  ?  But  the  bill  would  only 
cover  half  the  ground,  and  the  least  important  half,  so 
long  as  the  central  Council  of  the  Colony  was  a  tumultu- 
ous rabble,  meddling  with  affairs  of  State  which  they 
were  unable  to  understand.  That  Council,  in  his  opinion, 
should  be  reconstructed  on  the  model  of  the  House  of 
Peers.  Lord  North  thanked  the  orator,  (and  a  real 
orator  even  his  former  friends  admitted  that  on  this 
occasion  he  had  proved  himself  to  be,)  for  a  suggestion 
"worthy  of  his  great  mind."  On  the  fifteenth  of  April 
the  bill  was  presented  to  the  House  with  the  addition  of 
words  enacting  that  the  Council,  in  whose  selection  the 
Assembly  under  the  existing  constitution  had  a  voice, 
should  be  nominated  exclusively  by  the  Crown.1 

Governor  Pownall,  who  had  learned  the  institutions 
and  geography  of  Massachusetts  by  ruling  it  on  the 
spot,  reminded  the  House  that  it  was  not  a  question  of 
Boston  only.  If  the  measure  was  carried,  local  business 
could  not  be  transacted  in  the  furthest  corner  of  Maine, 
unless  special  leave  to  hold  a  Town-meeting  had  been 
obtained  from  a  Governor  resident  at  the  other  end  of 
three  hundred  miles  of  bad  roads  and  forest  tracks. 
Burke,  very  ill  heard  by  an  assembly  which  professed  to 
regard  a  colonial  Council  as  a  riotous  rabble,  called  in 
vain  for  the  exercise  of  care  and  deliberation.  They 
were  engaged,  he  said,  on  nothing  lighter  than  the  pro- 
scription of  a  province :  an  undertaking  which,  whether 
they  desired  it  or  not,  would  expand  itself  ere  long  into 
the  proscription  of  a  nation.  And  Savile,  begging  that 
attention  might  be  granted  him  during  trie  length  of  a 
single  sentence,  exclaimed  that  a  charter,  which  con- 
veyed a  sacred  right,  should  not  be  broken  without  first 

1  "  It  was  a  year,"  wrote  Horace  Walpole,  "  of  fine  harangues  ;  "  and  he 
instanced  especially  Wedderburn  against  Franklin,  Burke  on  the  Tea-duty, 
and  Lord  George  Germaine  on  the  government  of  Massachusetts. — Last 
Journals,  April,  1774. 


1 68 


THE  A  AI ERIC  AN  REVOLUTION 


hearing  what  might  be  put  forward  in  defence  of  it  by 
those  who  lived  beneath  its  safeguard.  But  such  con- 
siderations were  not  to  the  purpose  of  the  audience.  It 
was  one  of  those  moments  when  the  talk  and  tone  of 
society  have  greater  influence  than  the  arguments  of 
debate ;  and  a  squire,  who  had  recently  been  made  a 
baronet,  gave  the  House  a  sample  of  what  passed  cur- 
rent in  the  lobby  as  a  valuable  contribution  towards  the 
right  understanding  of  the  American  question.  Level- 
ling principles,  this  gentleman  affirmed,  prevailed  in  New 
England,  and  he  had  the  best  of  reasons  for  stating  it. 
He  had  an  acquaintance  who  called  at  a  merchant's 
house  in  Boston,  and  asked  the  servant  if  his  master 
was  at  home.  "My  master!"  the  man  replied.  "I 
have  no  master  but  Jesus  Christ." 

The  bill  for  annulling  the  charter  was  accompanied 
by  another  for  the  Impartial  Administration  of  Justice 
in  Massachusetts  Bay  :  which  was  a  fine  name  for  a  law 
empowering  the  Governor,  if  any  magistrate,  revenue 
officer,  or  military  man  was  indicted  for  murder,  to  send 
him  to  England  for  trial  in  the  King's  Bench.  Barre" 
and  Conway  challenged  Lord  North  to  produce  a  single 
example  of  a  government  servant  who,  having  been 
charged  with  a  capital  offence,  had  suffered  from  the 
injustice  of  an  American  tribunal.  They  recalled  to 
the  memory  of  Parliament,  (so  short  if  the  good  deeds 
of  those  whom  it  disliked  were  in  question,)  how,  at  a 
time  when  public  feeling  in  the  colony  was  at  a  height 
which  in  the  future  never  could  be  over-passed,  Captain 
Preston  and  his  soldiers,  after  the  fairest  of  fair  trials, 
had  been  acquitted  by  "an  American  jury,  a  New 
England  jury,  a  Boston  jury."  And  now  it  was  pro- 
posed to  remove  the  cognisance  of  grave  political 
offences  from  a  court  without  fear  and  without  favour, 
to  one  which  was  notoriously  ready,  —  as  Wilkes  had 
experienced,  —  to  subserve  the  vengeance  of  Ministers, 
and  which,  if  the  occasion  arose,  would  be  even  more 
willing  to  make  itself  the  instrument  of  their  misplaced 
lenity.  The  Government  supporters  took  no  notice 


THE  PENAL  LAWS  169 

whatsoever  of  Captain  Preston's  acquittal,  though  it  was 
a  concrete  instance  so  recent,  and  so  much  in  point,  that 
it  ought  to  have  coloured  and  permeated  the  entire  dis- 
cussion. After  the  usual  fashion  of  a  party  which  has 
plenty  of  votes,  and  no  case,  they  wandered  far  and 
wide  over  the  whole  colonial  controversy.  The  most 
admired  speech  was  that  of  young  Lord  Caermarthen, 
who  denied  the  right  of  Americans  to  complain  that 
they  were  taxed  without  being  represented,  when  such 
places  as  Manchester,  —  and,  he  might  have  added, 
Leeds,  and  Sheffield,  and  Birmingham,  —  had  no  mem- 
bers of  their  own  in  the  British  Parliament.  It  was  indeed 
a  magnificent  anticipation  of  the  calling  in  of  the  New 
World  to  balance  the  inequalities  of  the  old.  The  debate 
was  wound  up  by  the  gentleman  who  had  compared 
Boston  to  Carthage.  Speaking  this  time  in  English,  he 
recommended  the  Government,  if  the  people  of  Massa- 
chusetts did  not  take  their  chastisement  kindly,  to  burn 
their  woods,  and  leave  their  country  open  to  the  opera- 
tions of  the  military.  It  was  better,  he  said,  that  those 
regions  should  be  ruined  by  our  own  soldiers  than 
wrested  from  us  by  our  rebellious  children. 

The  effect  of  Lord  Caermarthen's  allusion  to  un- 
represented Manchester,  as  justifying  the  taxation  of 
unrepresented  America,  was  so  great  that  four  days 
afterwards  Burke  thought  it  worthy  of  a  refutation. 
"  So  then,"  he  said,  "  because  some  towns  in  England 
are  not  represented,  America  is  to  have  no  representative 
at  all.  They  are  our  children  ;  but,  when  children  ask 
for  bread,  we  are  not  to  give  them  a  stone.  When  this 
child  of  ours  wishes  to  assimilate  to  its  parent,  and  to 
reflect  with  true  filial  resemblance  the  beauteous  counte- 
nance of  British  liberty,  are  we  to  turn  to  them  the 
shameful  parts  of  our  constitution  ?  Are  we  to  give 
them  our  weakness  for  their  strength,  our  opprobrium 
for  their  glory  ?  " 

Even  after  the  lapse  of  a  century  and  a  quarter 
these  debates  are  not  pleasant  reading  for  an  English- 
man. They  went  far  to  justify  Turgot  in  his  wonder 


170  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

1  that  a  country,  which  had  cultivated  with  so  much  suc- 
cess all  the  branches  of  natural  science,  should  remain 
so  completely  below  itself  in  the  science  the  most  in- 
teresting of  all,  that  of  public  happiness.1  The  best 
which  could  be  said  for  the  policy  adopted  by  Parliament 
was  that  a  great  country  should  stand  upon  its  rights 
against  everybody,  and  at  all  hazards.  But  kindred 
States,  like  the  members  of  a  family,  sometimes  do  well 
to  refrain  from  insisting  on  advantages  which  the  law, 
if  strictly  read,  allows  them  to  take.  "There  was  a 
time,"  (wrote  Philip  Francis,  putting  into  five  lines  the 
moral  of  the  whole  story,)  "when  I  could  reason  as 
logically  and  passionately  as  anybody  against  the  Amer- 
| ;  icans  ;  but,  since  I  have  been  obliged  to  study  the  book 
I  of  wisdom,  I  have  dismissed  logic  out  of  my  library. 
The  fate  of  nations  must  not  be  tried  by  forms."  Passion 
had  more  to  do  than  logic  with  the  undertaking  which 
i  occupied  the  two  Houses  during  the  spring  of  1774. 
£  If  preambles  spoke  the  truth,  it  should  have  been  stated 
broadly  and  plainly  at  the  head  of  each  of  those  fatal 
bills  that,  whereas  the  inhabitants  of  the  capital  city  of 
Massachusetts  Bay  had  incurred  the  displeasure  of  his 
Majesty  and  this  present  Parliament,  it  was  adjudged 
necessary  and  expedient  to  pay  the  colony  out.  That 
was  the  object  aimed  at;  and  it  was  pursued  with  all 
the  disregard  of  appearances  which  had  marked  the 
proceedings  of  the  same  House  of  Commons  in  its 
crusade  against  the  electors  of  Middlesex,  and  with  still 
greater  indifference  to  consequences.  The  members  of 
the  majority  forgot  that  in  the  long  run  it  did  not  lie 
with  them  to  decide  that  Boston,  and  Boston  alone, 
should  have  to  answer  for  a  course  of  conduct  in  which 
four  colonies  had  taken  part,  and  which  commanded  the 
sympathy  of  all  the  others.  They  credited  communities 
of  their  own  race  and  blood  with  the  baseness  of  con- 
senting to  sit  quiet  while  one  of  their  number  was  ruined 
for  having  done  its  share  loyally,  if  somewhat  boister- 
ously, in  an  enterprise  to  which  all  were  pledged.  In 

1  Letter  from  Turgot  to  Dr.  Price;   March  22,  1778. 


THE  PENAL  LAWS  1 71 

the  optimism  of  their  resentment  they  ignored  human 
nature,  and  put  out  of  their  recollection  the  unanimity 
of  America  in  her  resistance  to  the  Stamp  Act ;  and  in 
their  heat  and  haste  they  thrust  out  of  sight  the  dignity 
of  debate,  the  rights  of  a  parliamentary  minority,  and 
even  a  show  of  fair  play  towards  the  people  whose 
freedom  and  prosperity  they  were  intent  on  destroying. 
•  The  Americans  who  resided  in  London,  or  who  found 
themselves  there  in  the  course  of  travel,  petitioned  that 
one  of  their  cities  should  not  be  visited  with  unexampled 
rigour  before  it  was  so  much  as  apprised  that  any  accu- 
sation had  been  brought  against  it.  Their  prayer  was 
treated  with  silent  contempt ;  but  something  more  than 
silent  contempt  was  required  to  stifle  the  voice  of  the 
true  friends  of  England  and  of  America  within  the 
walls  of  St.  Stephen's.  Insolence  and  intolerance  not 
often  before  ran  so  high,  or  were  directed  against  states- 
men of  such  established  character  and  standing.  Barre" 
had  to  sit  down  before  he  had  finished  his  say.  Uon- 
way,  for  the  crime  of  imploring  the  House,  in  a  very 
familiar  Latin  phrase,  to  hear  the  other  side,  was 
shouted  down  by  men  who  had  listened  to  a  fool  when 
he  treated  them  to  the  quotation  of  "  Delenda  est  Car- 
thago." General  Burgoyne  expressed  a  wish,  (and  he 
had  better  reason  than  he  then  knew  for  wishing  it,)  to  see 
America  convinced  by  persuasion  rather  than  the  sword  ; 
and  the  sentiment  raised  as  great  a  storm  as  if  it  had 
been  a  piece  of  impudent  disloyalty.  Johnstone,  a  dash- 
ing sailor,  who  had  been  governor  of  Florida,  contrived 
to  tell  the  House  that  the  work  on  which  they  were 
engaged  would  produce  a  confederacy  of  the  colonies, 
and  would  end  in  a  general  revolt ;  but  the  roisterers  on 
the  benches  opposite  soon  taught  him  that  he  had 
brought  his  knowledge  of  America  to  the  wrong 
market. 

Such  was  the  treatment  of  men  each  of  whom  had 
used  a  pistol  in  battle,  and  was  ready  for  one  on  very 
short  notice  in  the  ring  of  Hyde  Park ;  for  Johnstone 
was  a  noted  fire-eater,  and  Burgoyne,  though  good- 


172  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

natured,  never  allowed  a  joke  to  go  too  far.1  It  may 
well  be  believed  that  things  were  still  worse  for  civilians 
who  had  no  better  title  to  a  respectful  hearing  than  an 
acquaintance  with  the  subject  of  debate,  and  a  desire  to 
place  their  views  fairly  and  briefly  before  their  colleagues. 
The  speeches  of  ex-Governor  Pownall,  of  Alderman  Saw- 
bridge,  and  the  other  more  persistent  opponents  of  the 
ministerial  policy,  were  seldom  allowed  to  die  a  natural 
death.  Burke  himself,  though  he  held  the  House  while 
addressing  it  on  bye-issues,  had  to  contend  against  noise 
and  ostentatious  impertinence  when  he  applied  himself 
to  the  main  question  of  the  Government  legislation. 
High-handed  tactics  are  often  at  the  time  successful; 
and  the  whole  batch  of  measures  —  including  a  bill  for 
removing  the  legal  difficulties  which  hitherto  had  pre- 
served the  American  householder  from  the  infliction  of 
having  soldiers  quartered  under  his  private  roof  —  were 
placed  on  the  Statute-book  without  abridgement  or  es- 
sential alteration. 

The  third  great  blunder  had  now  been  committed  ; 
and,  as  in  the  two  former  cases,  the  effect  was  soon 
visible  in  a  shape  very  different  from  what  had  been 
expected.  The  despatch  of  the  troops  led  to  the  Boston 
massacre ;  the  imposition  and  retention  of  the  Tea-duty 
produced  the  world-famed  scene  in  Boston  harbour ; 
and  the  result  of  the  four  penal  Acts  was  to  involve 
Great  Britain  in  an  unnecessary  and  unprofitable  war 
with  exactly  as  many  powerful  nations.  The  main 

1  During  a  contested  election  in  Lancashire  a  party  of  Burgoyne's 
political  opponents  met  in  a  bar-room,  and  devised  a  scheme  for  what 
they  described  as  "trotting  the  General."  A  certain  James  Elton  pulled 
out  a  valuable  watch,  and  handed  it  to  Burgoyne's  servant,  with  the 
injunction  that  he  should  take  it  to  his  master,  and  request  him  to  say 
whether  he  could  tell  the  time  of  day.  Burgoyne  placed  the  watch  on  a 
tray  together  with  a  pair  of  pistols,  and  desired  his  man  to  bring  it  after 
him  to  the  inn  where  the  party  was  assembled.  He  went  round  the  circle 
asking  each  of  them  whether  he  was  the  owner  of  the  watch.  When  no 
one  claimed  it,  Burgoyne  turned  to  his  servant  and  said  :  "  Since  the  watch 
belongs  to  none  of  these  gentlemen,  you  may  take  it,  and  fob  it,  in  remem- 
brance of  the  Swan  Inn  at  Bolton."  As  any  one  who  knew  old  Lan- 
cashire might  readily  believe,  the  real  owner  went  by  the  name  of  Jemmy 
Trotter  to  his  dying  hour. 


THE   PENAL  LAWS  173 

responsibility  rested  with  the  Government  and  their 
followers ;  but  the  Opposition  were  not  free  from 
blame.  They  allowed  the  Address  in  reply  to  the  royal 
message  to  pass  unchallenged,  and  they  let  the  Boston 
Port  bill  go  through  all  its  stages  without  calling  for  a 
division.  They  voted  against  the  two  other  principal 
bills  on  the  third  reading,  with  about  as  much  effect  as 
if  the  governor  of  a  fortress  was  to  reserve  the  fire  of 
his  batteries  until  the  enemy  had  carried  their  sap  beyond 
the  counterscarp.  Cowed  by  the  aspect  of  the  benches 
in  front  of  them,  uncertain  as  to  the  feeling  in  the 
country,  and  afraid  to  put  it  to  the  test  by  giving  a 
vigorous  lead  to  those  wiser  tendencies  which  largely 
prevailed  in  the  great  commercial  centres,1  they  made  a 
very  poor  fight  in  the  Commons.  The  House  of  Lords 
almost  shone  by  comparison.  Rockingham,  who  wanted 
self-confidence  but  not  convictionTput  force  enough  upon 
himself  to  take  a  prominent  part  in  the  debate ;  and  in 
private  he  spared  no  remonstrances  in  order  to  keep  in 
the  path  of  duty  those  among  his  friends  who  showed 
hesitation.  Lord  Chatham  was  despondent,  and  most 
unhappy.  "  America,"  he  wrote,  "  sits  heavy  on  my 
mind.  India  is  a  perpetual  source  of  regrets.  There, 
where  I  have  garnered  up  my  heart,  where  our  strength 
lay^and  our  happiest  resources  presented  themselves,  it 
is  all  changed  into  danger,  weakness,  distraction,  and 
vulnerability."  He  was  not  well  enough  to  take  a  share 
in  the  earlier  discussions ;  and  his  speech,  when  at  length 
he  broke  silence,  was  rather  a  funeral  oration  over  the 
departed  peace  and  security  of  the  Empire  than  a  sum- 
mons to  political  conflict. 

But  men  do  not  look  to  the  Upper  House  for  the 
delay  and  mitigation  of  a  coercion  bill ;  and  the  Minis- 
ters won  all  along  the  line  with  an  ease  which  surprised 
themselves,  and  even  their  Royal  master,  who  knew  the 

1 "  The  landed  property,  except  some  of  the  most  sensible,  are,  as  natural, 
for  violent  measures.  The  interest  of  the  commercial  part  is  very  de- 
cidedly on  the  other  side,  and  their  passions  are  taking  that  turn." 
Shelburne  wrote  thus  to  Chatham  as  early  as  April  the  Fourth,  1774. 


1/4  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

probabilities  of  politics  as  well  as  any  man  alive.  His 
jubilation  had  no  bounds.  In  four  separate  letters  he 
could  not  find  an  adjective  short  of  "  infinite  "  to  express 
the  measure  of  his  satisfaction  over  every  fresh  proof  of 
the  irresolution  displayed  by  the  Opposition.  But  in  his 
own  view  he  owed  them  no  thanks.  Their  feebleness 
and  futility,  (such  were  the  epithets  which  he  applied  to 
them,)  were  an  involuntary  tribute  to  the  irresistible  ex- 
cellence of  the  ministerial  legislation,  and  only  procured 
them  his  disdain  without  detracting  anything  from  his 
displeasure.  So  far  from  being  touched  by  their  sub- 
missive conduct,  he  was  all  the  more  indignant  if  ever 
they  showed  a  spark  of  spirit.  When  they  spoke  and 
voted  in  favour  of  receiving  a  petition  from  an  Ameri- 
can gentleman  in  London,  a  former  agent  for  Massachu- 
setts, who  prayed  that  the  fate  of  the  colony  might  not 
be  finally  decided  until  letters  had  travelled  to  and  fro 
across  the  water,  the  King  pronounced  that  the  Opposi- 
tion had  violated  the  laws  of  decency,  but  that  nothing 
better  was  to  be  expected  from  men  who  were  reduced 
to  such  low  shifts.  He  had  a  right  to  enjoy  his  tri- 
umph. By  sheer  strength  of  purpose  he  had  imposed  his 
favourite  measures  on  the  Cabinet ;  and  the  Cabinet  had 
carried  them  through  Parliament  as  smoothly  as, — before 
Fox's  day  and  after  it,  though  not  during  it,  —  bills  for 
the  restraint  or  the  suppression  of  liberty  so  often  passed. 
Fox's  day  was  not  yet.  Everybody  was  talking  about 
him  ;  and  behind  his  back  little  was  said  that  was  compli- 
mentary, and  a  great  deal  that  was  abundantly  silly.  But 
some  veterans  of  public  life,  who  remembered  their  own 
mistakes  and  excesses  at  an  age  more  advanced  than 
his,  regarded  his  future  with  hope,  and  his  past  with 
amused  indulgence.  Chatham  had  his  notice  called  to  the 
tattle  which  represented  the  ex-Lord  of  the  Treasury  as 
a  premature  intriguer,  encouraged  in  his  mutiny  by  cer- 
tain members  of  the  Cabinet,  who  in  their  turn  had  acted 
on  a  hint  from  the  exalted  quarter  which  was  then  called 
the  Closet  "  The  part  of  Mr.  Fox, "  wrote  the  old 
statesman,  "  must  naturally  beget  speculations.  It  may 


THE  PENAL  LAWS 

however  be  all  resolved,  without  going  deeper,  into  youth 
and  warm  blood.  "  At  this  point  in  his  career,  (said  one 
who  watched  him  narrowly  and  not  unkindly,)  it  was  no 
longer  a  question  of  shining  by  speeches,  for  he  could 
scarce  outdo  what  he  had  done  already.  The  work 
which  lay  before  him  was  to  retrieve  his  character  by 
reforming  it,  to  practise  industry  and  application,  and  . 
to  court  instead  of  to  defy  mankind.1 

If  Fox  was  to  be  of  use  to  his  generation,  his  position  ' 
in  the  House  of  Commons  had  still  to  be  made ;  and  of  . 
that  no  one  was  more  conscious  than  himself.  Sorrow  I 
had  caused  him  to  think,  and  reflection  had  brought  self-  ' 
knowledge.  He  set  no  undue  store  on  the  gifts  which 
came  to  him  by  nature,  and  he  was  acutely  aware  of  the 
defects  which  were  in  full  proportion  to  his  extraordinary 
qualities.  Strong  in  the  unwonted  sensation  of  being  on 
his  guard  and  his  good  behaviour,  he  at  once  adopted 
an  independent  but  not  a  pretentious  attitude,  and  main- 
tained it  with  diligence,  forethought,  moderation,  and 
even  modesty.  Leaving,  as  he  safely  could,  the  form 
of  his  speaking  to  take  care  of  itself,  he  devoted  his 
exclusive  attention  to  the  substance  of  it,  and  to  the 
practical  effect  of  the  policy  which  he  recommended. 
He  began  by  a  protest  against  the  determination  of  the 
Speaker  to  exclude  strangers  from  the  gallery ;  so 
that  a  series  of  debates,  which  were  to  fix  the  destinies 
of  the  English-speaking  world,  might  not  be  conducted 
in  secret  conclave.  He  stoutly  objected  to  the  clause 
which  vested  the  responsibility  of  reopening  Boston  har- 
bour, whenever  the  time  came  for  it,  with  the  Crown  in- 
stead of  with  Parliament.  When,  by  way  of  answer,  he 
was  accused  of  desiring  to  rob  the  King  of  his  most  valued 
prerogative,  the  opportunity  of  showing  mercy,  he  al- 
lowed the  courtly  argument  to  pass  without  satirical  com- 
ment. He  contented  himself  with  insisting  that  his 
motion  to  omit  that  clause,  together  with  another  which 
was  more  questionable  still,  should  be  put  and  nega- 

1  Chatham  to  Shelburne  ;  March  6,  1774.     Last  Journals  of  Watyole  ; 
February,  1774. 


176  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

tived  ;  in  order  that  it  might  stand  on  record  in  the  jour- 
nals how,  amidst  the  general  panic,  at  least  one  member 
of  Parliament  had  objected  to  something  which  the 
Government  had  demanded. 

Fox  spoke  briefly,  but  not  infrequently,  on  the  other 
bills  relating  to  America;  more  especially  when  their 
details  were  being  arranged  in  Committee.  On  the 
nineteenth  of  April  the  House  of  Commons  considered  a 
motion  to  repeal  the  Tea-duty,  which  was  brought  for- 

7  ward  by  a  private  member.  Burke  signalised  the  even- 
ing by  a  splendid  oration.  Assisted  by  a  comparison  of 

\  the  notes  furtively  taken  by  various  Honourable  Gentle- 
men in  the  crown  of  their  hats,  he  subsequently  wrote 
it  out  from  memory,  and  saved  it  for  a  world  which  must 
otherwise  have  been  the  poorer.  The  Government  sup- 
porters would  have  refused  to  listen  to  Cicero  denounc- 
ing Antony,  if  the  performance  had  trenched  upon  the 
Government  time ;  but,  as  it  was  an  off-night,  they  gave 
themselves  up  with  a  clear  conscience  for  two  livelong 
hours  to  the  enjoyment  of  the  speech,  which,  among 
other  notable  passages,  contained  a  biographical  account 
of  Charles  Townshend  as  copious  as  the  discourse  of 
an  incoming  French  Academician  over  his  deceased 
predecessor.  Even  after  such  a  feast  of  rhetoric  they 
were  willing  to  hear  Charles  Fox,  though  they  would 
hear  no  one  else  on  the  same  side.  The  latest  words 
of  reason  which  the  House  accepted  before  it  went 
to  a  division,  (and  both  Barre  and  Burgoyne  tried  to 
address  it,)  were  those  in  which  the  young  man  denned 
the  case  in  language  as  plain  as  his  exposition  of  it  was 
accurate  and  adequate.  A  tax,  he  said,  could  only  be 
laid  for  three  purposes :  as  a  commercial  regulation,  for 
the  raising  of  revenue,  or  in  order  to  assert  a  right.  As 
to  the  first  two  purposes,  the  Minister  denied  that  he 
had  them  even  in  'mind ;  while  the  so-called  right  of 
taxation  was  asserted  to  justify  an  armed  interference 
on  the  part  of  Great  Britain,  and  that  interference  would 
have  the  inevitable  consequence  of  irritating  the  Ameri- 
can colonies  into  open  rebellion. 


THE  PENAL   LAWS  177 

For  the  first  time  in  his  life  Fox  looked  only  to  what 
was  juSTaTTd"  prudent  in  speech  and  action  ;  and  he  did 
not  endeavour,  or  expect,  to  attract  a  personal  following. 
One  sworn  partisan  he  always  was  sure  of  having. 
Poor  Stephen's  heart  was  in  the  right  place  in  his  great 
body.  "Tie  stood  by  his  brother  through  the  darkest  hour 
of  his  fortunes,  and  attended  him  gallantly  and  jauntily 
in  his  wise  endeavours,  as  he  had  so  often  done  in  his 
hare-brained  courses.  In  the  House,  which  was  almost 
identical  with  the  fashionable  world,  Stephen  was  some- 
thing of  a  favourite  in  spite  of  his  faults,  and  even,  it  is 
to  be  feared,  on  account  of  them.  He  took  his  share  in 
the  uphill  conflict ;  and  on  the  second  of  May,  when 
the  Charter  of  Massachusetts  was  under  consideration, 
he  delivered  himself  in  phrases  which  were  worthy  of  his 
father's  son  in  their  manly  common  sense,  and  of  his 
son's  father  in  their  broad  humanity.  "  I  rise,  sir,"  he 
said,  "with  an  utter  detestation  and  abhorrence  of  the 
present  measures.  We  are  either  to  treat  the  Americans 
as  subjects  or  as  rebels.  If  we  treat  them  as  subjects, 
the  bill  goes  too  far;  if  as  rebels,  it  does  not  go  far 
enough.  We  have  refused  to  hear  the  parties  in  their 
defence ;  and  we  are  going  to  destroy  their  charter  with- 
out knowing  the  constitution  of  their  Government." 

Those  were  the  last  sentences  which  Stephen  Fox  is 
known  to  have  uttered  in  public ;  for  in  twSTnoh'ffis  he 
was  a  peer,  and  within  seven  months  he  died.  By  that 
time  Charles  had  made  good  his  ground  in  public  esti- 
mation, and  had  secured  a  solid  base  of  operations  from 
which  he  was  soon  to  advance  fast  and  far.  Parliament 
was  very  ready  to  forget  and  forgive  in  the  case  of  a  scion 
of  an  old  and  famous  parliamentary  family.  He  had  not 
tried  to  shine;  he  had  placed  to  his  account  no  tran- 
scendent effort;  and  his  colleagues  liked  him  all  the 
better  for  his  self-suppression,  and  admired  him  none 
the  less.  But,  whenever  he  addressed  the  House,  he 
had  proved  himself  its  potential  master.  Amidst .  a 
tempest  of  violence  and  prejudice  he  alone  among  the 
opponents  of  the  Government  never  condescended  to 

VOL.  I.  N 


1 78  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

begin  with  an  apology,  and  never  sate  down  without 
having  driven  home  all  that  he  wished  to  say.  He  had 
vindicated  his  right  to  argue  a  coercion  bill  as  he  would 
have  argued  anything  else,  refusing  to  recognise  the 
hackneyed  plea  of  public  safety  as  an  excuse  for  hurry 
and  slovenliness,  and  sturdily  declining  to  mend  his 
pace  under  the  pressure  of  public  anger.  Having 
espoused  the  right  cause,  and  fought  for  it  like  one  who 
was  not  ashamed  of  it,  he  brought  an  increased  reputa- 
tion, and  an  established  authority,  out  of  as  sorry  a  busi- 
ness as  Parliament  had  ever  been  engaged  in.  But  he 
was  powerless  to  amend  the  Government  measures. 
The  whole  of  the  baleful  harvest  was  safely  garnered ; 
and,  —  amidst  the  Acts  for  paving  and  lighting  streets, 
and  for  widening  and  repairing  county  roads,  with 
which  the  Statute-book  of  1774,  like  any  other,  is 
crowded,  —  we  still  may  read,  in  faded  black  and  dingy 
white,  the  dry  and  conventional  text  of  those  famous 
laws  that  in  their  day  set  half  the  world  on  fire. 

For  the  matter  did  not  end  when  the  bills  had  received 
the  Royal  Assent.  There  was  an  Opposition  beyond  the 
seas  which  was  not  kept  from  speaking  out  by  the  fear 
of  being  called  factious.  The  same  ships  that  took  over 
copies  of  the  Port  Act,  carried  a  parcel  of  Bibles  and 
prayer-books  which  Dartmouth  entrusted  for  distribution 
to  a  clergyman  of  Philadelphia,  who  wrote  to  report 
the  effect  produced  upon  public  opinion  by  the  two 
consignments.  Personally,  the  good  man  expressed 
nothing  but  gratitude  towards  his  Lordship.  The  books 
had  been  bestowed  on  those  for  whom  they  were  in- 
tended, and  there  was  every  sign  that  they  would  be 
blessed  to  the  congregation  ;  but  consternation  prevailed 
in  Boston  on  hearing  that  their  harbour  was  to  be 
blocked  up,  and  all  the  colonies  seemed  to  be  united  in 
opposing  the  authority  of  Parliament.1 

The  worthy  divine  was  correct  in  his  reading  of  the 
situation.  But  though  a  Pennsylvanian,  whose  judge- 
1  The  Revd.  William  Stringer  to  Lord  Dartmouth  ;  May  14,  1774. 


ACTION  OF  MASSACHUSETTS  179 

ment  was  unclouded  by  the  imminence  of  a  terrible  and 
incalculable  danger,  might  already  regard  it  as  certain 
that  the  whole  of  America  would  make  common  cause, 
the  future  presented  itself  under  a  more  dubious  aspect 
to  dwellers  in  the  threatened  city.  "  We  have  not  men 
fit  for  the  times,"  said  John  Adams  in  his  private  diary. 
"We  are  deficient  in  genius,  in  education,  in  travel, 
in  fortune,  in  everything.  I  feel  unutterable  anxiety. 
God  grant  us  wisdom  and  fortitude !  Should  this  coun- 
try submit,  what  infamy  and  ruin !  Death,  in  any  form, 
is  less  terrible."  That  was  written  for  his  own  eyes 
alone ;  but  the  hour  was  too  grave,  and  the  men,  and 
the  women,  around  him  too  clear-sighted  and  resolute, 
for  him  to  mince  the  truth  even  when  writing  to  others. 
He  reminded  James  Warren  of  Plymouth,  who  was  as 
deep  in  the  troubled  waters  as  himself,  of  the  ugly  his- 
torical fact  that  people  circumstanced  like  them  had 
seldom  grown  old,  or  died  in  their  beds.  And  to  his 
wife  he  wrote :  "  We  live,  my  dear  soul,  in  an  age  of 
trial.  What  will  be  the  consequence  I  know  not.  The 
town  of  Boston,  for  aught  I  can  see,  must  suffer  martyr- 
dom. Our  principal  consolation  is  that  it  dies  in  a  noble 
cause."  That  was  the  spirit  in  which  the  cowards  of 
Boston  met  the  announcement  that  they  must  bow  their 
heads  to  the  yoke,  or  fight  against  such  odds  as  the 
world  had  never  seen.  The  last  time  that  Great  Britain 
had  exerted  her  full  strength,  she  had  beaten  the  French 
by  land  on  three  continents ;  had  established  over 
France  and  Spain  together  an  immeasurable  superiority 
at  sea ;  and  had  secured  for  herself  everything  in  both 
hemispheres  which  was  best  worth  taking.  Boston,  on 
the  other  hand,  contained  five  and  thirty  hundred  able- 
bodied  citizens;  and,  in  the  view  of  her  enemies,  no 
population  was  ever  composed  of  worse  men  and  poorer 
creatures.  So  George  the  Third,  his  Ministers,  and  his 
army  firmly  believed ;  and  they  engaged  in  the  struggle 
armed  with  all  the  moral  advantage  which  such  a  con- 
viction gives. 

Before  America  could  be  loyal  to  the  people  of  Bos- 


180  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

ton,  it  had  first  to  be  shown  whether  the  people  of  Bos- 
ton were  true  to  themselves.  On  the  tenth  of  May  the 
intelligence  arrived  that  the  Assembly  was  henceforward 
to  sit,  and  the  business  of  administration  to  be  carried 
on,  in  the  town  of  Salem ;  and  that  the  Custom-house 
was  to  be  removed  to  Marblehead,  the  principal  landing 
place  in  Salem  harbour.  Three  days  afterwards  Gen- 
eral Gage  arrived  in  Massachusetts  Bay,  with  full  powers 
as  Civil  Governor  of  the  colony,  and  as  Commander-in- 
Chief  for  the  whole  continent.  During  those  three  days 
the  Committees  of  Correspondence  which  represented 
Boston,  and  eight  neighbouring  villages,  had  quietly,  and 
rather  sadly,  taken  up  the  glove  which  the  giant  Empire 
had  contemptuously  flung  to  them.  They  had  got  ready 
their  appeal  to  all  the  Assemblies  of  the  continent,  in- 
viting a  universal  suspension  of  exports  and  imports  ; 
promising  to  suffer  for  America  with  a  becoming  forti- 
tude ;  confessing  that  singly  they  might  find  their  trial 
too  severe  ;  and  entreating  that  they  might  not  be  left 
to  struggle  alone,  when  the  very  existence  of  every 
colony,  as  a  free  people,  depended  upon  the  event. 
Brave  words  they  were,  and  the  inditing  of  them  at  such 
a  moment  was  in  itself  a  deed ;  but  something  more 
than  pen  and  ink  was  required  to  parry  the  blows  which 
were  now  showered  upon  the  town,  and  upon  the  State 
of  which  it  had  already  ceased  to  be  the  capital. 

On  the  first  of  June  the  blockade  of  the  harbour  was 
proclaimed,  and  the  ruin  and  starvation  of  Boston  at  once 
began.  The  industry  of  a  place  which  lived  by  building, 
sailing,  freighting,  and  unloading  ships  was  annihilated 
in  a  single  moment.  The  population,  which  had  fed  it- 
self from  the  sea,  would  now  have  to  subsist  on  the 
bounty  of  others,  conveyed  across  great  distances  by  a 
hastily  devised  system  of  land-carriage  in  a  district 
where  the  means  of  locomotion  were  unequal  to  such  a 
burden.  A  city  which  conducted  its  internal  communi- 
cations by  boat  almost  as  much  as  Venice,  and  quite  as 
much  as  Stockholm,  was  henceforward  divided  into  as 
many  isolated  quarters  as  there  were  suburbs  with  salt 


ACTION  OF  MASSACHUSETTS  l8l 

or  brackish  water  lying  between  them.  "The  law," 
Mr.  Bancroft  writes  in  his  History,  "was  executed  with 
a  rigour  that  went  beyond  the  intentions  of  its  authors. 
Not  a  scow  could  be  manned  by  oars  to  bring  an  ox,  or 
a  sheep,  or  a  bundle  of  hay,  from  the  islands.  All  water 
carriage  from  pier  to  pier,  though  but  of  lumber,  or 
bricks,  or  kine,  was  forbidden.  The  boats  that  plied  be- 
tween Boston  and  Charlestown  could  not  ferry  a  parcel 
of  goods  across  Charles  River.  The  fishermen  of 
Marblehead,  when  they  bestowed  quintals  of  dried  fish 
on  the  poor  of  Boston,  were  obliged  to  transport  their 
offerings  in  waggons  by  a  circuit  of  thirty  miles." l 
Lord  North,  when  he  pledged  himself  to  place  Boston 
at  a  distance  of  seventeen  miles  from  the  sea,  had  been 
almost  twice  as  good  as  his  word. 

In  a  fortnight's  time,  as  soon  as  the  pinch  began  to  be 
felt,  the  troops  came  back  into  the  town,  sore  and  surly ; 
and  a  standing  camp  for  two  battalions  was  established 
on  Boston  Common.  Relief,  or  hope  of  relief,  there  was 
none.  Long  before  the  summer  was  over  the  Constitu- 
tion would  be  abolished ;  the  old  Councillors  would  be 
displaced  by  Government  nominees ;  and  criminal  and 
civil  cases  would  be  tried  by  judges  whose  salaries  the 
Crown  paid,  and  by  juries  which  the  Crown  had  packed. 
The  right  of  petition  remained ;  but  it  was  worth  less 
than  nothing.  A  respectful  statement  of  abuses,  and  a 
humble  prayer  for  their  redress,  was  regarded  by  the 
King  and  the  Cabinet  as  a  form  of  treason  all  the  more 
offensive  because  it  could  not  be  punished  by  law. 
"  When  I  see,"  said  Franklin,  "  that  complaints  of  griev- 
ances are  so  odious  to  Government  that  even  the  mere 
pipe  which  conveys  them  becomes  obnoxious,  I  am  at 
a  loss  to  know  how  peace  and  union  are  to  be  maintained 
or  restored."  A  few  weeks,  or  days,  remained  in  which 
the  free  voice  of  the  country  could  still  be  heard ;  and 
there  were  those  who  intended  to  take  good  care  that  its 
latest  accents  should  mean  something.  Early  in  June 

1  Bancroft's  History  of  the  United  States  of  America ;  Epoch  Third, 
chapter  iv. 


1 82  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

the  Assembly  met  at  Salem.  On  the  seventeenth  of  the 
month  the  House,  behind  locked  doors,  and  with  ah  at- 
tendance larger  by  a  score  than  any  that  had  yet  been 
known,  took  into  consideration  the  question  of  inviting 
the  Thirteen  Colonies  to  a  general  Congress.  The 
Governor's  secretary,  on  the  wrong  side  of  the  keyhole, 
read  a  message  proclaiming  that  the  Assembly  was  dis- 
solved ;  but,  when  those,  who  had  entered  the  room  as 
senators,  filed  out  in  their  character  of  private  citizens, 
the  work  was  past  undoing.  The  place  named  "for  the 
Congress  was  Philadelphia ;  the  date  was  to  be  the  first 
of  September ;  and  the  five  delegates  for  Massachusetts 
had  all  been  duly  elected,  including  the  pair  of  statesmen 
whom  Massachusetts  Tories,  by  way  of  depreciation, 
pleased  themselves  by  calling  the  brace  of  Adamses.1 

The  note  had  been  sounded  sharp  and  clear,  and  the 
response  followed  like  an  echo.  The  first  to  rally  were 
those  who  had  the  most  to  gain  by  standing  aloof. 
James  the  Second,  in  the  matter  of  the  Declaration  of 
Indulgence,  had  failed  to  discover  a  bribe  which  would 
tempt  the  English  Nonconformists  to  assist  him  in  per- 
secuting even  those  who  had  persecuted  them  ;  and  their 
descendants  across  the  seas  had  not  degenerated.  In 
Marblehead  and  Salem  together  there  were  not  found 
eighty  individuals,  all  told,  who  cared  to  play  the  part  of 
wreckers  in  the  disaster  which  had  befallen  the  good 
ship  Boston.  A  much  larger  number  of  their  fellow- 
townsmen,  in  an  address  to  General  Gage,  repudiated 
any  intention  of  being  seduced  by  the  prospect  of  their 
own  advantage  into  complicity  with  a  course  of  action 

1  The  name  was  started  by  an  old  ex-Governor  in  1770,  in  a  sentence 
which  began  with  the  flavour  of  a  Biblical  reminiscence,  but  ran  off  into 
another  strain.  "  Mr.  Gushing  I  know,  and  Mr.  Hancock  I  know  ;  but 
where  the  devil  this  brace  of  Adamses  came  from  I  know  not. " 

In  his  Birthday  Ode  of  the  Fourth  June  William  Whitehead,  the  poet 
laureate,  had  drawn  a  much  more  pleasing  picture  of  the  attitude  of 
Massachusetts. 

"  The  prodigal  again  returns, 

And  on  his  parent's  neck  reclines. 
With  honest  shame  his  bosom  burns, 
And  in  his  eye  affection  shines." 


ACTION  OF  MASSACHUSETTS  183 

which,  whether  unjust  or  not  from  the  point  of  view  of 
the  Government,  would  on  their  own  part  be  to  the  last 
degree  ungracious  and  unfriendly.  "We  must,"  they 
said,  "  be  lost  to  all  feelings  of  humanity,  could  we  in- 
dulge one  thought  to  raise  our  fortunes  on  the  ruin  of 
our  suffering  neighbours."  To  the  Boston  merchants 
they  offered  the  gratuitous  use  of  their  wharves  and 
warehouses,  and  promised  to  lade  and  unlade  Boston 
goods  for  nothing.  And  indeed  they  very  soon  took 
the  opportunity  of  the  arrival  from  London  of  a  bark, 
with  chests  of  tea  on  board,  to  treat  the  cargo  in  Boston 
fashion,  and  so  disqualify  themselves  for  any  further 
marks  of  Royal  and  Ministerial  favour. 

Salem  and  Marblehead  were  forced  by  their  circum- 
stances to  declare  themselves  at  once;  and,  as  the 
provisions  of  the  Act  for  regulating  the  government  of 
Massachusetts  were  successively  put  in  force,  the  Town- 
ships of  the  colony,  one  after  another,  eagerly  followed 
suit.  The  new  councillors  were  appointed  on  the  King's 
writ  of  mandamus,  and  twenty-five  among  them  accepted 
the  office.  It  was  the  worst  day's  work  they  had  ever 
done  for  themselves,  for  their  cause,  and  for  the  peace, 
(and,  in  some  unfortunate  cases,  for  the  fair  reputation,) 
of  the  neighbourhoods  in  which  they  severally  resided. 
For  popular  feeling  ran  high  and  fierce ;  and  their 
countrymen  were  determined  that  they  should  not  serve, 
to  whatever  lengths  it  might  be  necessary  to  go  in 
order  to  prevent  them.  Two  thousand  men  marched 
in  companies  on  to  the  Common  at  Worcester,  escort- 
ing one  of  their  townsmen  whose  abilities  and  personal 
popularity  had  recommended  him  to  the  notice  of  the 
Government,  and  formed  a  hollow  square  around  him 
while,  with  uncovered  head,  he  read  the  resignation  of 
his  seat  at  the  Council  Board.  George  Watson  of  Ply- 
mouth, who,  in  the  stately  language  of  the  day,  "  pos- 
sessed almost  every  virtue  that  can  adorn  and  dignify 
the  human  character,"  made  known  his  intention  of 
assuming  the  proffered  function.  On  the  next  Sunday 
forenoon,  when  he  took  his  accustomed  place  in  the 


1 84  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

meeting-house,  his  friends  and  familiar  associates  put 
on  their  hats  and  walked  out  beneath  the  eyes  of  the 
congregation.  As  they  passed  him  he  bent  his  head 
over  the  handle  of  his  cane  ;  and,  when  the  time  arrived, 
he  declined  the  oath  of  qualification.  More  violent 
methods,  which  in  certain  cases  did  not  stop  short  of 
grotesque  and  even  brutal  horseplay,1  were  employed 
against  less  respected  or  more  determined  men.  Of 
thirty-six  who  had  received  the  King's  summons,  the 
majority  either  refused  obedience  from  the  first,  or  were 
persuaded  or  intimidated  into  withdrawing  their  consent 
to  join  the  Council.  The  rest  took  sanctuary  with  the 
garrison  in  Boston  ;  and  the  tidings  which  came  from 
their  homes  in  the  country  districts  made  it  certain  that 
they  would  do  very  well  to  stay  there. 

The  immediate  vicinity  of  the  soldiers  was  a  preven- 
tive against  outrages  of  which  the  best  of  the  patriots 
were  heartily  ashamed ;  but  no  body  of  troops  could  be 
large  enough,  or  near  enough,  to  deter  New  Englanders 
from  acting  as  if  they  still  possessed  those  municipal 
rights  of  which  they  had  been  deprived  without  a  hear- 
ing. General  Gage  issued  a  proclamation  warning  all 
persons  against  attending  Town-meetings ;  and  Town- 
meetings  were  held  regularly,  and  were  attended  by 
larger  numbers  than  ever.  The  men  of  Salem,  towards 
whom  he  had  special  reasons  for  being  unwilling  to  pro- 
ceed to  extremities,  walked  into  the  Town-house  under 
his  eyes,  and  between  footways  lined  with  his  soldiers. 
Boston,  whose  character  in  official  quarters  had  long 
been  gone,  was  obliged  to  be  more  cautious.  When 
called  to  account  by  the  Governor,  the  Selectmen  ad- 

1  Some  rather  cruel  manifestations  of  popular  wrath,  employed  during 
the  American  tumults,  are  new  to  history  ;  but  the  stock  punishment  of 
riding  the  rail  was  of  old  English  County  origin.  In  the  Records  of 
Worcestershire,  for  the  year  1614,  there  is  a  memorandum  that  certain 
persons  were  bound  over  to  appear  at  Sessions.  "  These  three,  with  divers 
others,  on  Sunday  the  4th  October  between  9  and  10  in  the  night,  took 
Thomas  Smith,  Curate  of  Milton,  and  by  violence  put  him  upon  a  staffe, 
and  carried  him  up  and  down  the  towne,  and  caused  fiddlers  to  playe  by 
him." 


ACTION  OF  MASSACHUSETTS  185 

mitted  that  a  meeting  had  been  held ;  but  it  was  a  meet- 
ing, (so  they  argued,)  which  had  been  adjourned  from  a 
date  anterior  to  the  time  when  the  Act  came  into  force. 
Gage,  who  saw  that,  if  this  theory  was  accepted,  the 
same  meeting,  by  means  of  repeated  adjournments,  might 
be  kept  alive  till  the  end  of  the  century,  reported  the 
matter  to  his  Council.  The  new  Councillors  pronounced 
themselves  unable  to  advise  him  on  a  point  of  law, — 
that  law  which  already  had  ceased  to  have  force  beyond 
the  reach  of  a  British  bayonet ;  —  but  they  took  occasion 
to  lay  before  his  consideration  the  disordered  state  of 
the  province,  and  the  cruel  plight  to  which  his  policy 
had  reduced  themselves. 

When  the  day  came  round  for  the  Courts  of  Justice 
to  sit  in  their  remodelled  shape,  the  Judges  were  treated 
more  tenderly  as  regarded  their  persons  than  the  Man- 
damus Councillors,  but  with  quite  as  little  reverence 
for  their  office.  They  took  their  seats  at  Boston  only 
to  learn  that  those  citizens,  who  had  been  returned  as 
jurors,  one  and  all  refused  the  oath.  A  great  multitude 
marched  into  Springfield,  with  drums  and  trumpets,  and 
hoisted  a  black  flag  over  the  Court-house,  as  a  sign  of 
what  any  one  might  expect  who  entered  it  in  an  official 
capacity.  At  Worcester  the  members  of  the  tribunal 
with  all  their  staff  walked  in  procession,  safe  and  sorry, 
through  a  quarter  of  a  mile  of  street  lined  on  each  side 
by  people  drawn  up  six  deep.  These  militia-men,  (for 
such  they  were,)  had  their  Company  officers  to  command 
them,  and  wanted  nothing  to  make  them  a  military 
force  except  the  fire-arms  which  were  standing  ready 
at  home,  and  which  two  out  of  every  three  amongst 
them  could  handle  more  effectively  than  an  average 
European  soldier.  Wherever  the  Judges  went,  if  once 
they  were  fairly  inside  a  town,  they  were  not  allowed 
to  leave  it  until  they  had  plighted  their  honour  that 
they  would  depart  without  transacting  any  legal  busi- 
ness. After  a  succession  of  such  experiences  the  Chief 
Justice  and  his  colleagues  waited  upon  the  Governor, 
and  represented  to  him  that  they  must  abandon  the 


1 86  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

pretence  of  exercising  their  functions  in  a  Province 
where  there  were  no  jurymen  to  listen  to  their  charges, 
and  where  they  could  not  even  sit  in  court  to  do  noth- 
ing unless  the  approaches  were  guarded  by  the  best  part 
of  a  brigade  of  British  infantry. 

The  process  of  bringing  Massachusetts  into  line  with 
the  Revolution  was  harsh,  and  sometimes  ruthless.  So 
far  as  any  public  opinion  opposed  to  their  own  was  in 
question,  the  patriots  went  on  the  principle  of  making 
the  Province  a  solitude,  and  calling  it  unanimity.  The 
earliest  sufferers  were  Government  servants.  Clark 
Chandler,  the  Registrar  of  Probate  at  Worcester,  had 
entered  on  the  local  records  a  remonstrance  against  ac- 
tion taken  by  the  more  advanced  politicians  among  the 
citizens.  He  was  called  upon  in  open  Town-meeting  to 
erase  the  inscription  from  the  books ;  and,  when  he 
showed  signs  of  reluctance,  his  fingers  were  dipped  in 
ink,  and  drawn  to  and  fro  across  the  page.  The  chaise 
of  Benjamin  Hallowell,  a  Commissioner  of  Customs, 
was  pursued  into  Boston  at  a  gallop  by  more  than  a 
hundred  and  fifty  mounted  men.  Jonathan  Sewall  is 
known  in  the  school  histories  of  America  as  the  recipient 
of  a  famous  confidence.  It  was  to  him  that  John  Adams, 
after  they  had  travelled  together  as  far  as  the  parting 
of  the  ways,  used  those  words  of  spirited  tautology : 
"  Swim  or  sink",  live  or  die,  survive  or  perish  with  my 
country,  is  my  unalterable  determination."  Unfortu- 
nately for  himself,  Sewall  was  a  law  officer  of  the 
Crown  as  well  as  a  bosom  friend  of  the  Crown's  adver- 
sary. His  elegant  house  in  Cambridge  was  attacked 
by  the  mob.  He  was  forced  to  retire  to  Boston,  and 
subsequently  to  Europe,  where,  after  long  struggles  and 
many  sorrows,  he  died  of  a  broken  heart. 

These  were  official  people ;  but  their  fate  was  shared 
by  private  gentlemen  whose  sins  against  liberty  did  not 
go  beyond  some  rather  violent  and  foolish  ebullitions  of 
speech.  This  one  had  hoped  that  the  rebels  would 
swing  for  it.  That  one  had  said  that  he  should  be  glad 
to  see  the  blood  streaming  from  the  hearts  of  the  popu- 


ACTION  OF  MASSACHUSETTS  1 8? 

lar  leaders ;  and,  in  a  milder  mood,  had  contented  him- 
self with  wishing  that  they  might  become  turnspits  in 
the  kitchens  of  the  English  nobility.  Another,  while  it 
was  still  a  question  whether  Massachusetts  should  resist, 
or  accept  her  punishment  tractably,  had  a  child  bap- 
tized by  the  name  of  "  Submit."  Angry  and  idle,  —  for 
their  life  was  now  and  henceforward  one  of  enforced 
and  unwelcome  leisure,  — they  talked  recklessly ;  though 
most  of  them  would  not  of  their  own  accord  have  hurt 
a  fly,  let  alone  a  fellow-citizen.  They  crowded  the  inns 
and  boarding-houses  of  Boston,  and  the  spare  chambers 
of  their  city  friends ;  lingering  on  the  very  edge  of  the 
ocean  before  they  started  on  a  much  longer  flight,  from 
which  for  most  of  them  there  was  no  returning. 

Among  those  who  had  been  expelled  from  their 
homes  were  some  of  the  richest  landowners  in  the  prov- 
ince, —  men  who  would  have  added  respectability  and 
distinction  to  any  aristocracy  in  the  world.  Colonel 
Saltonstall  was  a  good  soldier,  a  just  magistrate,  and  a 
kind  neighbour ;  but  the  mob  of  his  district  would  not 
allow  him  to  stay,  and  he  went  first  to  Boston,  and  then 
into  exile.  He  refused  to  bear  arms  for  the  Crown, 
against  so  many  old  friends  who  would  gladly  have 
marched  and  fought  under  him  if  he  had  found  it  in  his 
conscience  to  take  service  with  the  Continental  army. 
He  felt  to  the  full  such  consolation  as  was  afforded  by 
the  thought  that  he  had  done  nothing  with  which  to 
reproach  himself.  "  I  have  had  more  satisfaction,"  he 
wrote  from  England,  "  in  a  private  life  here  than  I 
should  have  had  in  being  next  in  command  to  General 
Washington."  The  Vassalls  were  a  family  of  worth 
and  honour,  one  of  whom  was  grandfather  of  the  Lady 
Holland  who  kept  a  salon  and  a  dining-table  for  the 
Whigs  of  the  great  Reform  Bill.  John  Vassall  of  Cam- 
bridge had  no  choice  but  to  cross  the  seas  with  his 
kindred.  His  great  property  in  Massachusetts  was  ulti- 
mately confiscated,  after  having  been  subjected  to  a 
course  of  systematised  spoliation.  His  mansion-house 
at  Cambridge  became  the  headquarters  of  the  Amer- 


1 88  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

ican  army.  The  Committee  of  Safety  published  a  suc- 
cession of  orders,  carefully  regulating  the  distribution 
of  the  produce  on  his  estate ;  and  the  Provincial  Con- 
gress solemnly  voted  half  a  pint  of  rum  a  day  to  the 
persons  employed  on  cutting  his  crops,  and  those  of  his 
fellow-refugees.  Isaac  Royall  of  Medford,  to  whom 
hospitality  was  a  passion,  and  the  affection  of  all 
around  him,  high  and  low,  the  prize  which  he  coveted, 
did  not  escape  banishment  and  proscription.  It  was 
lightly,  but  cruelly,  said  by  his  political  opponents  that 
to  carry  on  his  farms  in  his  absence  was  not  an  easy 
matter ;  "  for  the  honest  man's  scythe  refused  to  cut 
Tory  grass,  and  his  oxen  to  turn  a  Tory  furrow."  Dur- 
ing the  dreary  years  which  lay  before  him,  his  cherished 
wish  was  to  be  buried  in  Massachusetts ;  but  that  boon 
was  denied  him.  He  died  in  England,  before  the  war 
was  over,  bequeathing  two  thousand  acres  of  his  neg- 
lected soil  to  endow  a  Chair  in  the  famous  university  of 
his  native  province  which  he  himself  was  never  per- 
mitted to  revisit. 

Women,  whatever  might  be  their  opinions,  were  not 
uncivilly  treated.  The  habitual  chivalry  of  Americans 
was  extended  to  every  applicant  for  the  benefit  of  it, 
even  if  she  might  not  always  have  been  the  most  esti- 
mable of  her  sex.  There  was  in  Massachusetts  a  dame 
of  quality,  who  once  had  a  face  which  contemporaries 
described  as  of  "  matchless  beauty,"  and  a  story  very 
closely  resembling  that  of  the  notorious  Lady  Hamilton. 
She  had  been  the  companion  of  a  wealthy  baronet, 
Collector  of  the  Customs  for  the  Port  of  Boston.  Those 
Customs,  with  the  license  accorded  to  favoured  place- 
holders before  the  Revolution,  he  had  contrived  to  col- 
lect while  residing  at  his  ease  in  the  South  of  Europe. 
He  was  frightened  into  marriage  by  the  earthquake  of 
Lisbon ;  and  after  his  death  the  widow  returned  to 
America,  to  her  late  husband's  country  house,  where 
he  had  maintained  what,  for  the  New  England  of  that 
day,  was  a  grand  and  lavish  establishment.  When  the 
troubles  grew  serious  she  was  alarmed  by  the  attitude 


ACTION  OF  MASSACHUSETTS  189 

of  the  rural  population,  and  asked  leave  to  retire  to 
Boston.  The  Provincial  Congress  furnished  her  with 
an  escort,  and  passed  a  special  Resolution  permitting 
her  to  take  into  the  city  her  horses,  carriages,  live-stock, 
trunks,  bedding,  and  provisions.  They  detained  noth- 
ing of  hers  except  arms  and  ammunition,  for  which  the 
lady  had  little  use,  and  the  patriots  much.  She  got 
safe  into  Boston,  and  safe  out  of  it  to  England,  where 
she  closed  her  career  as  the  wife  of  a  county  banker. 

Amenities  such  as  these  were  not  for  every  day  or 
every  person.  There  was  one  class  of  Government  par- 
tisans which,  in  particular,  fared  very  badly.  It  was 
frequently  the  case  that  a  clergyman,  accustomed  to 
deal  out  instruction,  held  it  incumbent  upon  him  to 
inform  laymen  about  matters  in  which  they  did  not 
desire  his  guidance.  Old  Doctor  Byles  of  Boston, 
though  a  stout  Loyalist,  had  the  good  sense  never  to 
bring  affairs  of  state  inside  the  porch  of  his  church. 
"  In  the  first  place,"  he  told  his  people,  "  I  do  not  under- 
stand politics.  In  the  second  place  you  all  do,  every 
man  and  mother's  son  of  you.  In  the  third  place  you 
have  politics  all  the  week ;  so  pray  let  one  day  in  the 
seven  be  devoted  to  religion.  In  the  fourth  place  I  am 
engaged  on  infinitely  higher  work.  Name  to  me  any 
subject  of  more  consequence  than  the  truth  I  bring  to 
you,  and  I  will  preach  on  it  the  next  Sabbath."  That  was 
his  theory  of  duty  ;  and  it  carried  him  unhurt,  though  not 
unthreatened,  over  the  worst  of  the  bad  times.  He 
continued  to  reside,  through  the  war  and  for  years  after, 
in  his  native  city  ;  and  he  kept  it  alive  by  excellent  jokes 
which  no  one  relished  more  than  the  Whig  officials  who 
were  usually  the  subjects  of  them.  But  others  of  his 
cloth  were  less  prudent.  Every  minister  of  religion, 
who  opposed  the  Crown,  was  inciting  his  congregation 
to  armed  revolt  in  the  vein,  and  often  with  the  very 
phrases,  of  the  Old  Testament  Prophets;  and  for  the 
ministers  who  supported  the  Crown  to  keep  unbroken 
silence  was  more  than  human  or  clerical  nature  could 
endure.  They  delivered  their  souls,  and  were  not  long 


IQO  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

in  discovering  that  those  to  whom  they  preached  had 
no  attribute  of  a  flock  about  them  except  the  name. 
One  outspoken  clergyman  had  bullets  fired  into  his 
house.  The  pulpit  of  another  was  nailed  up,  and  with 
some  excuse,  for  he  had  announced  from  it  that  colo- 
nists who  were  shot  by  the  royal  soldiers  would  find 
that  their  punishment  did  not  end  in  this  life.  A  third, 
whose  hearers  complained  that  "  his  Toryism  was  most 
offensive,"  was  put  into  the  village  pound,  and  had  her- 
rings thrown  over  for  him  to  eat.  The  physicians  as  a 
rule  adhered  to  the  Crown ;  but,  whatever  might  be  the 
case  with  the  spiritual  needs  of  parishioners,  the  bodily 
health  of  citizens,  actual  and  prospective,  was  not  to  be 
trifled  with.  The  person  of  a  medical  man  was  very 
generally  respected,  and  his  property  spared.  The 
most  dutiful  Son  of  Liberty  was  willing  to  excuse  his 
own  forbearance  by  the  explanation  that  doctors  were 
indebted  for  their  immunity  from  disciplinary  treatment 
to  "  the  exigencies  of  the  ladies." 

Massachusetts  had  stood  by  Boston ;  and  it  was  soon 
evident  that  all  the  other  colonies  would  stand  by  Mas- 
sachusetts. The  Port  Act  was  carried  through  the 
American  townships  as  swiftly  as  the  rumour  of  a  great 
disaster  pervades  the  bazaars  of  India.  It  was  printed 
on  mourning  paper,  with  a  black  border ;  it  was  cried 
4  about  the  streets  as  a  Barbarous  Murder ;  it  was  sol- 
emnly burned  in  the  presence  of  vast  crowds  of  people. 
The  first  of  June  was  kept  in  Philadelphia  with  peals 
of  muffled  bells,  and  colours  half-mast  high  on  ships  in 
the  river,  and  with  the  shutters  up  from  dawn  to  dark 
in  ninety  houses  out  of  a  hundred.  The  Assembly  of 
Virginia  set  the  day  apart  for  humiliation  and  fasting ; 
1,  but  the  colonies  found  more  effectual  means  of  relieving 
|  Boston  than  by  sharing  her  abstinence.  South  Carolina 
sent  two  hundred  barrels  of  rice,  with  eight  hundred  more 
to  follow.  In  North  Carolina,  Wilmington  raised  two 
thousand  pounds  in  a  few  days ;  the  sum  which  much 
about  the  same  time  a  fashionable  Club  was  spending  at 


THE    COLONIES  MAKE    COMMON  CAUSE          191 

Ranelagh  on  a  Masquerade  that  was  the  wonder  of  the 
London  season.1  To  convey  the  contributions  of  the  little 
seaport  a  ship  was  offered  freight  free,  and  a  crew  volun- 
teered to  make  the  voyage  without  wages.  The  less  re- 
mote districts  of  New  England  kept  Boston  supplied  with 
portable  and  perishable  victuals ;  and  the  class  of  food 
which  could  travel  on  foot  came  over  many  leagues  of 
road,  and  not  seldom  from  places  which  could  badly 
spare  it.  Two  hundred  and  fifty-eight  sheep  were 
driven  in  from  one  town  in  Connecticut,  and  two  hun- 
dred and  ninety  from  another.  Israel  Putnam  brought 
a  flock  of  six  or  seven  score  from  his  remote  parish, 
and  did  not  fail  to  show  himself  on  the  Common,  where 
he  could  enjoy  the  sight  of  more  soldiers  together  than 
he  had  seen  since  he  fought  by  the  side  of  Lord  Howe 
at  Ticonderoga.  The  British  officers,  who  liked  him 
well,  suggested  that  they  must  owe  the  pleasure  of  his 
visit  to  his  having  sniffed  powder  in  the  air.  They  told 
him  that  he  very  soon  might  have  it  to  his  heart's  con- 
tent, as  they  were  expecting  twenty  ships  of  the  line, 
and  as  many  regiments,  from  England.  "  If  they  come," 
said  the  old  fellow  gravely,  "  I  am  prepared  to  treat 
them  as  enemies."  2 

Indeed,  Putnam's  colony  was  full  of  fight.  Besides 
bringing  in  sheep  and  bullocks,  the  men  of  Connecticut 
brought  themselves  and  their  cudgels  in  even  greater 
numbers  whenever  it  was  known  that  the  Massachusetts 
Judges  were  going  to  hold  a  Court  within  a  long  day's 

1  "  Last  night  was  the  triumph  of  Boodle's.    Our  Masquerade  cost  two 
thousand  guineas.     A  sum  which  might  have  fertilised  a  Province  vanished 
in  a  few  hours."     So  Gibbon  wrote  on  May  the  Fourth,  1774,  while  he  was 
still  to  all  outward  appearance  a  fine  gentleman,  and  nothing  more.     "  For 
my  own  part,"  he  said,  "  I  subscribe,  but  am  very  indifferent  about  it,     A 
few  friends,' and  a  great  many  books,  entertain  me;   but  I  think  fifteen 
hundred  people  the  worst  company  in  the  world." 

2  The  first  five  chapters  of  Bancroft's  Third  Epoch  relate,  comprehen- 
sively and  minutely,  the  uprising  of  the  American  colonies  in  consequence 
of  the  Penal  Acts  of  1774.     The  severities  exercised  against  the  friends  of 
Government,  which  form  the  unpleasing  side  of  the  story,  are  most  fairly 
and  effectively  told  by  Mr.  Lorenzo  Sabine  in  his  Biographical  Sketches  of 
the  Loyalists  of  the  Revolution. 


IQ2  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

walk  of  the  border-line  between  the  two  provinces.  The 
clearest  eye  in  America  already  discerned  that  the  time 
was  at  hand  when  men  would  be  wanted  as  much  as 
money  or  provisions,  and  a  great  deal  more  than  votes 
of  sympathy.  Patriotic  circles  were  discoursing  freely 
about  the  excellence  of  the  oratory  in  the  Colonial  Con- 
vention of  Virginia.  Enthusiastic  members  of  that  Con- 
vention had  assured  John  Adams,  (who  was  accustomed 
to  hear  the  same  about  himself  from  his  own  fellow- 
townsmen,)  that  Richard  Henry  Lee,  and  Patrick  Henry, 
would  respectively  bear  comparison  with  Cicero  and  with 
Demosthenes.  But  a  shrewd  delegate  from  South  Caro- 
lina, who,  on  his  way  to  Congress,  had  looked  in  at 
Williamsburg  to  see  what  they  were  doing  in  the  Old 
Dominion,  gave  it  as  his  opinion  that  the  most  eloquent 
speech  had  been  made  by  Colonel  Washington.  "  I  will 
raise,"  that  officer  had  said,  "  one  thousand  men  towards 
the  relief  of  Boston,  and  subsist  them  at  my  own  ex- 
pense." It  was  a  sound  Anglo-Saxon  version  of  the 
march  of  the  Marseillais.  If  they  knew  how  to  die,  he 
would  see  that  in  the  meanwhile  they  should  know  where 
they  could  get  something  to  eat. 

But  above  all,  and  before  all,  the  proposal  of  a  Con- 
gress met  with  eager  acceptance  on  the  part  of  twelve 
out  of  the  thirteen  colonies.  They  took  care  to  make 
convenient  for  themselves  both  the  day  and  the  locality 
which  Massachusetts  had  indicated.  On  the  tenth  of 
August  the  delegates,  who  had  been  chosen  at  Salem, 
set  forth  on  their  journey  from"  Boston.  The  spaces 
which  they  had  to  traverse,  and  the  welcome  which 
everywhere  greeted  them,  brought  home  to  their  minds, 
for  the  first  time,  a  comfortable  assurance  that  the  task 
of  subjugating  so  large  a  country,  inhabited  by  such  a 
people,  would  possibly  require  more  months,  and  a  great 
many  more  regiments,  than  had  been  allotted  to  it  in 
the  anticipations  of  the  British  War  Office.  Everywhere 
on  their  passage  bells  were  ringing,  cannons  firing,  and 
men,  women,  and  children  crowding  "  as  if  to  a  corona- 
tion." When  John  Adams  was  a  very  old  gentleman, 


THE   COLONIES  MAKE    COMMON  CAUSE          193 

it  took  much  to  make  him  angry ;  but  he  never  allowed 
any  doubt  to  be  thrown,  in  his  presence,  on  the  enthu- 
siasm which  attended  himself  and  his  colleagues  during 
their  progress  to  Philadelphia  in  the  summer  of  1774. 
The  only  time  that  his  grandson  ever  incurred  the  in- 
dignation of  the  ex-President  "was  by  his  expression 
of  surprise  at  the  extent  of  those  ceremonies,  which  he 
happened  to  find  set  forth  in  high  colours  in  an  old  news- 
paper. He  was  then  a  boy,  and  knew  no  better.  But 
he  never  forgot  the  reproof." 

The  material  comforts  which  awaited  the  Bostonians, 
in  ever  greater  profusion  as  they  journeyed  southwards, 
were  matter  for  constantly  renewed  surprise  and  satis- 
faction, tempered  by  an  inward  sense  of  stern  superiority 
at  the  recollection  of  the  plain  but  invigorating  fare 
which  they  had  left  behind  them.  New  York,  free- 
hearted as  now,  would  not  let  them  go  forward  on  their 
way  until  they  had  devoted  six  evenings  to  rest  and  re- 
freshment, and  as  many  days  to  seeing  the  sights;  — 
the  view  from  the  steeple  of  the  New  Dutch  church ; 
St.  Paul's,  with  its  piazza  and  pillars,  which  had  cost 
eighteen  thousand  pounds,  in  York  money ;  and  the 
statue  of  his  Majesty  on  horseback  in  the  Bowling 
Green,  of  solid  lead  gilded  with  gold,  which  had  still 
two  years  to  stand  on  the  marble  pedestal  before  it 
was  pulled  down  to  be  run  into  bullets.  They  rode  on 
through  New  Jersey,  which  they  thought  a  paradise ; 
as  indeed  it  was,  and  as  it  remained  until  the  Hessians 
had  been  allowed  their  will  on  it.  They  halted  for  a 
Sunday  at  Princeton  College,  where  the  scholars  studied 
very  hard,  but  sang  very  badly  in  chapel ;  and  where 
the  inmates,  from  the  president  downwards,  were  as 
high  sons  of  liberty  as  any  in  America.  They  went  on 
their  course  from  town  to  city,  honouring  toasts ;  hear- 
ing sermons ;  recording  the  text  from  which  the  clergy- 
man preached,  and  observing  whether  he  spoke  from 
notes  ;  admiring  the  public  buildings,  and  carefully  writ- 
ing down  what  they  cost  in  the  currency  of  the  colony. 
At  the  "  pretty  village  "  of  Trenton  they  were  ferried 

VOL.  I.  O 


194  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

over  the  Delaware,  in  the  opposite  direction  from  that  in 
which  it  was  to  be  crossed  on  the  December  night  when 
the  tide  of  war  showed  the  first  faint  sign  of  turning. 

On  the  nineteenth  afternoon  they  entered  Philadel- 
phia, where  they  were  housed  and  feasted  with  a  cor- 
diality which  in  those  early  days  of  the  Revolution  had 
the  air  of  being  universal,  and  with  a  luxury  which 
threw  even  the  glories  of  New  York  into  the  shade. 
They  had  known  what  it  was  to  breakfast  in  a  villa  on 
the  Hudson  River  with  "  a  very  large  silver  coffee  pot,  a 
very  large  silver  tea  pot,  napkins  of  the  finest  materials, 
plates  full  of  choice  fruit,  and  toast  and  bread-and-butter 
in  great  perfection."  But  in  Philadelphia,  —  whether 
it  was  at  the  residence  of  a  Roman  Catholic  gentleman, 
with  ten  thousand  a  year  in  sterling  money,  "reputed 
the  first  fortune  in  America";  or  the  Chief  Justice  of 
the  Province ;  or  a  young  Quaker  lawyer  and  his  pretty 
wife,  —  there  was  magnificence,  and,  above  all,  abun- 
dance, under  many  roofs.  "  A  most  sinful  feast  again," 
John  Adams  wrote.  "  Everything  which  could  delight 
the  eye  or  allure  the  taste.  Curds  and  creams,  jellies, 
sweetmeats  of  various  sorts,  twenty  sorts  of  tarts,  fools, 
trifles,  floating  islands,  and  whipped  sillabubs."  These 
dainties  were  washed  down  by  floods  of  Madeira,  more 
undeniable  than  the  political  principles  of  some  among 
their  hosts ;  for,  (as  was  proved  just  three  years  later, 
when  red-coats  were  seated  round  the  same  tables,) 
Philadelphia  loved  to  place  her  best  before  her  visitors, 
quite  irrespective  of  whether  or  not  they  were  trusty 
patriots.  But  for  the  present  the  opinions  of  the  enter- 
tainers seemed  as  sound  as  their  wine,  and  gushed  as 
freely.  At  elegant  suppers,  where  the  company  drank 
sentiments  till  near  midnight,  might  be  heard  such  un- 
exceptionable aspirations  as  :  "  May  Britain  be  wise,  and 
America  be  free !  "  "  May  the  fair  dove  of  liberty,  in 
this  deluge  of  despotism,  find  rest  to  the  sole  of  her 
foot  on  the  soil  of  America !  "  "  May  the  collision  of 
British  flint  and  American  steel  produce  that  spark  of 
liberty  which  shall  illuminate  the  latest  posterity  !  " 


THE    COLONIES  MAKE    COMMON  CAUSE 


195 


Philadelphia  was  destined  in  the  course  of  the  war 
to  play^the  important,  if  not  very  noble,  part  of  serving 
as  a  "Capua  to  the  British  army ;  but  the  men  of  the 
first  Congress  were  of  a  political  fibre  which  was  proof 
against  any  enervating  influences.  They  fell  to  work 
forthwith,  and  their  labours  were  continuous,  severe, 
and  admirably  adapted  to  the  particularities  of  the 
situation.  Possessed  of  no  constitutional  authority  to 
legislate  or  govern,  they  passed,  after  searching  debate 
and  minute  revision,  Resolutions  which  had  the  "moral 
force  of  laws,  and  the  practical  effect  of  administrative 
decrees.  On  the  eighth  of  October  they  put  on  record 
"  that  this  Congress  approve  the  opposition  of  the 
Massachusetts  Bay  to  the  late  Acts  of  Parliament ;  and, 
if  the  same  shall  be  attempted  to  be  carried  into  exe- 
cution by  force,  all  America  ought  to  support  them  in 
their  opposition."  They  then  proceeded  to  draw  up  a 
Declaration  of  Rights,  claiming  for  the  American  people 
in  their  provincial  assemblies  a  free  and  exclusive  power 
of  legislation  on  all  matters  of  taxation  and  internal 
policy,  and  calling  for  the  repeal,  in  whole  or  in  part, 
of  eleven  Acts  of  Parliament  by  which  that  claim  was 
infringed.  They  unanimously  agreed  not  to  import  any 
merchandise  from  the  mother-country;  but,  like  wary 
men  of  business,  they  gave  themselves  another  twelve- 
month during  which  American  goods  might  be  exported 
to  Great  Britain,  if  Great  Britain  chose  to  take  them. 

One  class  of  imports  was  prohibited  specifically,  un- 
conditionally, and  apart  from  all  considerations  of  poli- 
tics. "  We  will,"  so  Congress  proclaimed,  "  neither 
import,  nor  purchase  any  slave  imported,  after  the  first 
day  of  December  next ;  after  which  time  we  will  wholly 
discontinue  the  slave  trade."  The  pledge  was  binding 
upon  all ;  but  it  bore  the  special  stamp  of  Virginia.  The 
Assembly  of  that  colony  had,  over  and  over  again,  framed 
and  carried,  in  condemnation  of  the  slave  trade,  laws 
which  had,  over  and  over  again,  been  disallowed  by  the 
Royal  veto,  enforced  on  one  occasion  by  a  personal  and 
emphatic  expression  of  the  Royal  anger.  It  is  melan- 

02 


M 


196  THE   AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

choly  to  reflect  what  the  social  condition  and  the  politi- 
cal history  of  Virginia  might  have  been  if  the  Home  Gov- 
ernment had  allowed  free  play  to  the  generous  impulses 
which  actuated  her  public  men  before  the  Revolutionary 
war.  They  liked  to  be  told  high  and  hard  truths,  and 
w'fcre  prepared  to  act  them  out  in  practice.  "  Every 
gentleman  here  is  born  a  petty  tyrant.  Taught  to  re- 
gard a  part  of  our  own  species  in  the  most  abject  and 
contemptible  degree  below  us,  we  lose  that  idea  of  the 
dignity  of  man  which  the  hand  of  Nature  hath  planted 
in  us  for  great  and  useful  purposes.  Habituated  from 
our  infancy  to  trample  upon  the  rights  of  human  nature, 
every  liberal  sentiment  is  enfeebled  in  our  minds ;  and 
in  such  an  infernal  school  are  to  be  educated  our  future 
legislators  and  rulers."  That  was  how,  in  1773,  a  Virgin- 
ian representative  discoursed  openly  to  his  fellows.  No 
such  speech  could  have  been  made  with  impunity  in  the 
State  Legislature  during  the  generation  which  preceded 
the  Secession  of  1861. 

And  finally,  knowing  by  repeated  experience  that  for 
Americans  to  petition  Parliament  was  only  to  court  their 
own  humiliation,  Congress  laid  formality  aside,  and  pub- 
lished a  direct  appeal  to  all  true  and  kindly  Englishmen. 
The  people  of  Great  Britain,  (so  the  document  ran,)  had 
been  led  to  greatness  by  the  hand  of  liberty ;  and  there- 
fore the  people  of  America,  in  all  confidence,  invoked 
their  sense  of  justice,  prayed  for  permission  to  share  their 
freedom,  and  anxiously  protested  against  the  calumny 
that  the  colonies  were  aiming  at  separation  under  the 
pretence  of  asserting  the  right  of  self-government. 
Chatham,  after  confiding  to  the  House  of  Lords  that  his 
favtmrite  study  had  been  the  political  literature  of  "  the 
master-countries  of  the  world,"  declared  and  avowed 
that  the  Resolutions  and  Addresses  put  forth  by  the  Con- 
gress at  Philadelphia,  "  for  solidity  of  reasoning,  force  of 
sagacity,  and  wisdom  of  conclusion,  under  such  a  com- 
plication of  difficult  circumstances,"  were  surpassed  by 
no  body  of  men,  of  any  age  and  nation,  who  had  ever  is- 
sued a  state  paper.  A  contemporary  Scotch  journalist 


THE    COLONIES  MAKE    COMMON  CAUSE          197 

described  these  productions  as  written  with  so  much 
spirit,  sound  reason,  and  true  knowledge  of  the  constitu- 
tion, that  they  had  given  more  uneasiness  than  all  the 
other  proceedings  of  the  Congress.1 

The  rate  of  speed  at  which  compositions  of  that  excel- 
lence were  devised,  drafted,  criticised,  amended,  and 
sanctioned  appears  enviable  to  the  member  of  a  modern 
representative  assembly  ;  but  it  fell  short  of  what  satis- 
fied men  accustomed  to  the  succinct  methods  of  a  New 
England  Town-meeting,  and  for  whom  Philadelphia  was 
a  place  of  honourable  but,  as  it  seemed  to  them,  almost 
interminable  exile.  As  early  as  the  tenth  of  October 
John  Adams  wrote  :  "  The  deliberations  of  the  Congress 
are  spun  out  to  an  immeasurable  length.  There  is  so 
much  wit,  sense,  learning,  acuteness,  subtlety,  and  elo- 
quence among  fifty  gentlemen,  each  of  whom  has  been 
habituated  to  lead  and  guide  in  his  own  Province,  that 
an  immensity  of  time  is  spent  unnecessarily."  The  end1 
was  not  far  off.  On  the  twentieth  of  the  month  the 
Pennsylvanian  Assembly  entertained  Congress  at  a 
dinner  in  the  City  Tavern.  The  whole  table  rose  to 
the  sentiment,  "  May  the  sword  of  the  parent  never 
be  stained  with  the  blood  of  her  children  ! "  Even  the 
Quakers  who  were  present  drained  their  glasses  on  the 
ground  that  it  was  not  a  toast,  but  a  prayer;  and  a 
prayer  which  was  much  to  their  own  liking.  Six  days 
afterwards  Congress  dissolved  itself.  The  tenth  "Of  May 
was  appointed  for  the  meeting  of  its  successor  ;  and  the 
Canadian  colonies,  and  the  Floridas,  were  invited  to 
send  representatives.  Two  days  more,  and  the  Massa- 
chusetts delegates  mounted  for  their  homeward  journey. 
"We  took  our  departure,"  said  Adams,  "in  a  very  great 
rain,  from  the  happy,  the  peaceful,  the  elegant,  the 
hospitable  and  polite  city  of  Philadelphia.  It  is  not 
very  likely  that  I  shall  ever  visit  this  part  of  the  world 
again ;  but  I  shall  ever  retain  a  most  grateful  sense  of 
the  many  civilities  I  have  received  in  it,  and  shall  think 

1  The  passage  referred  to  in  the  text  is  quoted  by  Professor  Tyler  in 
chapter  xv.  of  his  Literary  History. 


198  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

myself  happy  to  have  an  opportunity  of  returning 
them.  "  Events  were  at  hand  of  such  a  nature  that  to 
set  a  limit  to  what  was  likely  needed  more  than  human 
foresight.  John  Adams  had  not  seen  Philadelphia  for 
the  last  time,  by  many ;  and  the  return  dinners  with 
which  he  requited  her  hospitality  were  given  by  him  as 
President  of  seventeen  States,  and  six  millions  of 
people. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  GENERAL    ELECTION  OF    17/4.      THE  WINTER  SESSION 

WHILE  the  House  of  Commons  was  scheming  the  ruin 
of  Boston,  its  own  days  were  already  being  numbered ; 
and  those  who  speculated  on  the  exact  date  of  its  dis- 
appearance had  a  very  narrow  margin  within  which 
their  calculations  could  range.  Charles  Fox  experienced 
the  fortune  which  frequently  awaited  him  where  money 
was  to  be  lost  or  won.  He  laid  Sir  George  Macartney 
ten  guineas  to  five  that  the  Dissolution  would  not  take 
place  before  Christmas,  1 774 ;  and  on  the  last  day  of 
September  sixty  messengers  passed  through  one  single 
turnpike,  in  a  hurry  to  inform  the  country  that  the  writs 
were  being  prepared  for  immediate  issue. 

When  dealing  with  so  long,  and  so  eventful,  a  national 
history  as  ours,  it  is  never  safe  to  speak  in  superlatives ; 
but  it  may  confidently  be  asserted  that  the  burden  of 
proof  rests  with  those  who  maintain  that  a  worse  Par- 
liament ever  sate  than  that  which  was  elected  in  the 
spring  of  1768.  Chosen  amidst  an  orgy  of  corruption, 
its  title  to  remembrance  rests  on  two  performances. 
By  a  great  and  sustained  exertion  of  misdirected  energy 
it  succeeded  in  depriving  the  Middlesex  electors  of  their 
rights  for  half  a  dozen  sessions ;  and  it  threw  away  the 
loyalty  of  America.  One  good  deed  stands  to  its  ac- 
count. In  a  better  moment,  inspired  by  the  inflexible 
integrity  of  George  Grenville,  it  had  enacted  a  law 
framed  in  the  interest  of  electoral  morality  with  sincere 
intention,  and  not  a  little  skill.  The  trial  of  an  election 
petition,  which  had  hitherto  been  determined  by  a  party- 
vote  in  a  Committee  of  the  whole  House,  was  now  trans- 

199 


2OO  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

ferred  to  a  small  number  of  selected  members,  who 
were  bound  to  listen  to  the  whole  evidence,  and  decide 
the  case  according  to  its  rights.  The  proceeding  be- 
came henceforward  something  of  a  judicial  reality, 
instead  of  a  mere  opportunity  for  the  people  in  power 
to  increase  their  existing  majority  by  substituting  a 
friend  in  the  place  of  an  opponent.  Great  things  were 
expected  from  the  new  Act  by  honest  men  of  all  politi- 
cal opinions.  Samuel  Johnson  congratulated  the  elec- 
tors of  Great  Britain  on  the  circumstance  that  a  claim 
to  a  seat  in  Parliament  would  now  be  examined  with  the 
same  scrupulousness  and  solemnity  as  any  other  title. 
Under  the  old  state  of  things,  (so  he  most  truly  said,) 
to  have  friends  in  a  borough  was  of  little  use  to  a  candi- 
date unless  he  had  friends  in  the  House  of  Commons; 
and  a  man  became  a  member  because  he  was  chosen, 
not  by  his  constituents,  but  by  his  fellow-senators. 
The  case  could  not  be  more  pithily  stated  ;  but  it  reads 
oddly  in  a  pamphlet1  issued  on  behalf  of  a  Cabinet 
which,  by  the  brute  force  of  partisan  votes  within  the 
walls  of  Parliament,  thrice  unseated  Wilkes,  and  ended 
by  seating  Luttrell. 

These  symptoms  of  nascent  purity  were  not  equally 
acceptable  in  a  higher  quarter.  The  King  understood 
the  inner  working  of  his  own  system  of  government 
better  than  did  the  downright  old  Tory  author  who  had 
taken  up  the  cudgels  to  defend  it.  Little  as  George  the 
Third  loved  Grenville  when  alive,  he  had  still  less  liking 
for  the  well-meant  and  carefully  devised  statute  which 
that  statesman  had  left  behind  him  as  a  legacy  to  his 
country.  In  February,  1774,  the  Commons  had  voted 
by  more  than  two  to  one  in  favour  of  making  the  Act 
perpetual.  No  one  argued  against  the  proposal  on  its 
merits  except  Rigby,  who,  with  a  touch  of  genuine  feel- 
ing, implored  the  House  to  think  yet  again  before  it  for- 
bade treating.  But  the  King  expressed  to  Lord  North 
his  regret  that  Parliament  had  been  misled  by  a  false  love 
of  popularity,  and  consoled  himself  with  the  reflection 

1  The  Patriot,  Addressed  to  the  Electors  of  Great  Britain  ;  1774. 


GENERAL  ELECTION  OF  1774  2OI 

that  the  mischief  would  some  day  be  undone,  because 
"  passion  was  a  short  madness." 

Grenville's  law  had  very  seriously  altered,  for  a  time 
at  all  events,  the  conditions  under  which  his  Majesty 
practised  the  art  wherein  he  was  a  master.  The  first 
Dissolution  which  takes  place  under  a  new  Corrupt 
Practices  Act  is  always  a  season  of  perturbation  among 
those  more  humble  operators  who  now  pull  the  hidden 
strings  of  politics ;  and  the  King  and  his  coadjutors,  in 
the  autumn  of  17/4,  hesitated  about  doing  many  things 
which  they  had  done  fearlessly  at  the  general  election 
of  1768,  and  which,  after  the  manner  of  their  craft,  they 
had  learned  how  to  do  safely  before  the  general  election 
of  I78O.1  But,  even  in  those  early  days,  whenever  they 
were  on  firm  ground,  they  acted  broadly,  promptly,  and 
decisively.  Parliament  had  made  it  dangerous  to  bribe 
the  electors  in  the  boroughs;  but  nothing,  except  the 
limits  of  that  Secret  Service  Fund  which  had  been 
extracted  from  the  taxpayer  on  the  pretext  that  it  was 
to  be  expended  in  securing  the  general  interests  of  the 
nation  abroad  and  at  home,  stood  in  their  way  when  it 
was  a  question  of  bribing  the  patrons.  "  A  note,"  (such 
were  Lord  North's  orders  to  Mr.  John  Robinson,  the 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury,)  "  should  be  written  to  Lord 
Falmouth  in  my  name,  and  put  into  safe  hands.  His 
Lordship  must  be  told,  in  as  polite  terms  as  possible,  that 
I  hope  he  will  permit  me  to  recommend  to  three  of  his 
six  seats  in  Cornwall.  The  terms  he  expects  are  25<DO/. 
a  seat,  to  which  I  am  ready  to  agree  ;  "  and  he  had  still 
to  agree  when  his  noble  friend,  rather  shabbily,  (as  he 
complained,)  made  it  guineas  instead  of  pounds.  "  Mr. 
Legge,"  wrote  the  Prime  Minister  on  the  sixth  of  Octo- 

1  The  King  and  Rigby  were  not  alone  in  their  dislike  of  the  Grenville 
Act,  as  is  indicated  in  Samuel  Foote's  play  of  The  Cozeners,  which  was 
put  upon  the  stage  in  1774. 

"  Mrs.  Flee? em.     Have  you  advertised  a  seat  to  be  sold  ? 

"Flaw.  I  never  neglect  business,  you  know  ;  but  the  perpetuating  of 
this  damned  Bribery  Act  has  thrown  such  a  rub  in  our  way. 

"  Mrs.  Flee? em.  New  acts,  like  new  brooms,  make  a  little  bustle  at 
first.  But  the  dirt  will  return,  never  fear." 


202  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

her,  "  can  only  afford  4OO/.  If  he  comes  in  for  Lost- 
withiel  he  will  cost  the  public  2000  guineas.  Gascoign 
should  have  the  refusal  of  Tregony  if  he  will  pay  iooo/.  ; 
but  I  do  not  see  why  we  should  bring  him  in  cheaper 
than  any  other  servant  of  the  Crown.  If  he  will  not 
pay,  he  must  give  way  to  Mr.  Best  or  Mr.  Peachy." 
Six  weeks  afterwards,  when  the  goods  had  all  been 
delivered  and  the  bills  were  coming  in,  some  of  the  bar- 
gains had  not  yet  been  finally  closed.  "  Let  Cooper 
know  whether  you  promised  Masterman  25OO/.  or  3OOO/. 
for  each  of  Lord  Edgcumbe's  seats.  I  was  going  to 
pay  him  twelve  thousand  five  hundred  pounds,  but  he 
demanded  fifteen  thousand."  1 

These  delectable  details  had  for  George  the  Third 
the  same  fascination  as  the  numbers  and  discipline  of 
his  soldiers  had  for  Frederic  the  Great,  and  their  height 
for  Frederic's  father.  Determined  to  get  his  informa- 
tion from  the  fountain-head,  if  that  phrase  can  be  applied 
to  such  very  muddy  water,  he  wrote  direct  for  news, 
and  more  news,  to  Mr.  John  Robinson,  whose  assiduity 
in  keeping  him  informed  of  what  was  going  forward, 
(so  he  graciously  acknowledged,)  he  could  not  enough 
commend.  He  sent  three  letters  to  Lord  North,  in  the 
course  of  five  days,  about  the  poll  for  Aldermen  in  the 
City  of  London,  regarding  it  as  an  indication  of  the  proba- 
ble action  which  the  Liverymen  would  take  at  the  poll 
for  their  parliamentary  members.  He  was  careful  to 
remind  the  Prime  Minister  of  a  report  which  had 
reached  his  ears,  that  bad  votes  were  being  tendered 
for  the  Opposition  candidates  at  Westminster;  and  he 
gave  personal  orders  that  his  household  troops,  horse 
and  foot,  should  be  canvassed  on  behalf  of  Lord  Percy 
and  Lord  Thomas  Clinton,  who  were  standing  in  the 
Government  interest.  In  one  electoral  department, 
more  important  then  than  now,  he  had  a  free  hand, 
and  he  let  its  weight  be  felt.  The  mode  of  choosing 
Scottish  representative  peers  was  not  affected  by  the 

1  Abergavenny  MSS. ;  published  by  the  Historical  Manuscripts  Com- 
mission, 1887. 


GENERAL  ELECTION  OF  1774  203 

Grenville  Act ;  and  the  King  arranged  the  list  as  sum- 
marily as  though  he  were  nominating  as  many  Lords 
in  Waiting.  His  method  of  management  called  forth 
on  the  present  occasion  a  letter  in  refreshing  contrast 
to  the  waste  of  sycophancy  and  greediness  by  which  it 
is  surrounded.  Lord  Buchan  informed  Dartmouth,  as 
the  only  Minister  with  whom  he  cared  to  communicate 
on  a  friendly  footing,  that  Lord  Suffolk,  writing  as  Sec- 
retary of  State,  had  thought  proper  to  send  him  an 
authoritative  message  on  the  subject  of  the  sixteen 
peers  to  be  elected  for  Scotland.  "  I  returned  his 
Lordship  an  answer  suitable  to  the  affront  he  had  ven- 
tured to  offer;  and  I  do  most  earnestly  intreat  your 
Lordship,  as  an  old  acquaintance,  and  a  person  for 
whom  I  have  a  singular  good-will,  that  you  will,  when 
an  opportunity  offers,  suggest  that,  if  I  am  to  be 
applied  to  for  the  future  in  that  manner  by  any  of  the 
King's  servants  I  shall,  notwithstanding  my  disposition 
to  rustication,  make  one  more  visit  to  the  great  city  to 
chastise  the  person  who  shall  waste  his  ink  and  paper 
in  that  manner."1 

The  consequences  of  the  Grenville  Act  were  not  as 
sudden,  nor  as  sweeping,  as  Rigby  apprehended.  It 
may  have  seemed  a  dry  election  to  those  who,  between 
their  twinges  of  gout,  recollected  the  flood  of  liquor 
which  six  years  before  had  inundated  the  constituencies. 
But  there  was  as  yet  no  lack  of  the  rough  conviviality 
which  long  ere  this  had  driven  Horace  Walpole  from 
Parliament.  It  was  a  bad  time  for  a  member  of  the 
Dilettanti  Club  who  at  that  period  of  the  year  did  not 
care  to  leave  London,  and  the  great  country  houses 
round  London,  for  any  point  short  of  Italy  ;  especially 
if  his  political  interests  required  him  to  travel  almost 
as  far  as  Italy,  in  exactly  the  opposite  direction.  John 
Crawford  the  younger  of  Auchinanes,  —  whose  grati- 
tude, (as  has  already  been  related,)  Charles  Fox  ac- 
quired by  coming  chivalrously  to  the  rescue  when  he 

^Dartmouth  MSS,;  vol.  iii.,  p.  21 1. 


204  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

was  involved  in  rhetorical  difficulties,1  —  has  left  a 
record  of  what  he  went  through  in  order  to  re-enter 
a  House  of  Commons  where  he  was  afraid  to  speak, 
and  did  not  greatly  care  to  sit.  No  one  can  read  with- 
out compassion,  and  few  politicians  without  a  pang  of 
sympathy,  the  letters  which  he  addressed  to  those 
members  of  the  Fitzpatrick  connection  the  necessities 
of  whose  canvass  took  them  no  further  afield  than  the 
Home  Counties.  It  had  been  serious  enough  when, 
between  one  election  and  another,  he  had  been  doing  no 
more  than  nurse  his  popularity,  and  attempt  painfully 
to  acquire  in  North  British  circles  the  reputation  of  a 
good  fellow.  "I  have  at  this  moment,"  he  wrote  to 
Lord  Ossory,  "  three  neighbours  who  are  come  to  dine 
with  me.  I  dine  at  four,  and  they  came  at  one,  and  I 
am  now  making  them  my  mortal  enemies  by  not  going 
down  to  them.  I  had  yesterday  likewise  three  gentle- 
men to  dine,  whom  I  wished  most  to  be  well  with  ;  but 
I  have  heard  that  they  were  dissatisfied  with  me  for  not 
giving  them  wine  enough.  My  wine  is  the  best,  I  sup- 
pose, in  the  world  :  my  clarets  of  vintage  fifty-nine ;  my 
Port,  Sherry,  Madeira,  sweet  wines,  some  of  it  forty 
years  old,  and  scarce  any  less  than  twenty."  It  is  no 
wonder  that,  when  the  Renfrewshire  election  came  in 
earnest,  the  owner  of  this  cellar  was  paying  his  penalty 
in  bodily  suffering  for  the  glory  of  such  a  possession. 
"  This  is  a  small  county,  and  whenever  I  get  upon  my 
feet,  I  shall  be  able  to  go  through  it  in  a  few  days. 
The  Duke  of  Hamilton  has  given  me  his  interest,  which 
is  very  considerable.  You  may  guess  how  I  pass  my 
time  between  the  gout,  and  the  country  gentlemen  who 
come  flocking  in  upon  me.  I  have  passed  two  cruel 
nights  ;  violent  pain,  abominable  company,  and  no  sleep. 
Yesterday  my  antagonist  came  to  see  me.  There  were 
eight  besides  myself,  who  only  appeared  for  half  an 
hour.  They  sat  from  three  to  ten  o'clock,  and  I  had 
the  curiosity  to  inquire  from  the  butler  what  they 
drank.  You  can  calculate  better  than  I  can,  so  divide 

1  Early  History  of  Charles  Fox,  chapter  x. 


GENERAL  ELECTION  OF  1774  2O5 

ten  bottles  of  wine,  and  sixteen  bowls  of  punch,  each  of 
which  would  hold  four  bottles.  Can  you  conceive  any- 
thing more  beastly  or  more  insupportable  ?  "  1 

Meanwhile  the  leading  member  of  Crawford's  circle 
would  have  been  well  pleased  to  light  upon  a  seat  where 
the  process  of  electioneering  consisted  in  making  him- 
self agreeable  to  a  duke,  and  drinking  a  sufficiency  of 
fifty-nine  claret  with  commoners.  The  purchase  of 
boroughs  was  a  cash  transaction,  and  therefore  outside 
the  sphere  of  Charles  Fox's  financial  operations ;  and 
the  few  which  could  be  obtained  as  a  favour  were  not 
for  him.  The  most  confiding  of  patrons  would  hesitate 
before  he  sacrificed  a  couple  of  thousand  pounds  for 
the  honour  of  making  a  senator  of  a  young  gentleman 
whose  shortcomings  were  historical,  and  whose  public 
virtues  might  well  be  regarded  as  of  too  recent  origin  to 
stand  the  strain  of  a  six  years  Parliament.  Fox,  said 
Walpole,  like  the  Ghost  in  Hamlet,  shifted  to  many 
quarters;  but  in  most  the  cock  crew,  and  he  walked 
off.  At  last  he  found  an  asylum  at  Malmesbury,  a 
delightful  constituency  with  thirteen  electors.  It  is 
possible  that  his  success  was  the  result  of  a  compromise 
between  the  two  parties ;  for  his  colleague  was  Mr. 
William  Strahan,  as  estimable  a  man  as  supported  the 
Government,  which  as  King's  Printer  he  could  not  very 
well  help  doing.  To  satisfy  the  current  requirements 
of  the  Malmesbury  burgesses  he  possessed  that  which 

1  Letters,  in  the  Russell  collection,  from  Crawford  to  Lord  Ossory  ;  Sep- 
tember, 1774.  The  locus  classicus  which  determines  what  our  ancestors 
regarded  as  an  inadequate  provision  of  liquor  for  a  party  of  three  may  be 
found  in  a  letter  written  to  George  Selwyn  by  a  fast  parson.  "  The  whim 
took  them  of  ordering  their  dinner,  and  a  very  good  one  they  had :  mack- 
erel, a  delicate  neck  of  veal,  a  piece  of  Hamborough  beef,  cabbage  and 
salad,  and  a  gooseberry  tart.  When  they  had  drunk  the  bottle  of  white 
wine,  and  of  port,  which  accompanied  the  dinner,  and  after  that  the  only 
double  bottle  of  claret  that  I  had  left,  I  found  in  an  old  corner  one  of  the 
two  bottles  of  Burgundy  which  I  took  from  your  cellar  when  you  gave  me 
the  key  of  it.  By  Jove,  how  they  did  abuse  my  modesty  that  instead  of 
two  I  did  not  take  two  dozen  !  But,  having  no  more,  we  closed  with  a 
pint  of  Dantzic  cherry  brandy,  and  have  just  parted  in  a  tolerable  state  of 
insensibility  to  the  ills  of  human  life." 


206  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

Charles  Fox  wanted ;  for  he  had  long  been  in  a  position 
to  lay  by  a  thousand  pounds  a  year  from  the  profits  of 
his  business. 

The  arrangement  suited  Strahan  ;  for  he  was  not  one 
of  those  who  carried  public  differences  into  personal 
relations.  His  two  closest  intimacies  were  with  two 
men  who  had  not  a  political  view  in  common.  He  had 
done  more  than  anybody  else  to  help  Samuel  Johnson 
through  his  period  of  distress ;  and  in  later  and  happier 
days  he  acted  as  his  banker,  and  such  a  banker  as  any 
literary  man  would  rejoice  to  have.  He  found  places 
for  young  people  whom  the  great  writer  desired  to 
assist ;  and  franked  his  letters ;  and  did  his  best  to 
enable  him  to  frank  them  himself  by  recommending 
him  to  the  Secretary  for  the  Treasury  as  a  parliamen- 
tary candidate,  on  the  ground  that  the  King's  friends 
would  find  him  a  lamb,  and  the  King's  enemies  a  lion. 
On  the  other  hand  Strahan  came  as  near  as  the  ordi- 
nary duration  of  human  existence  would  allow  to  being 
a  life-long  friend  of  Franklin,  whom  in  1757  he  already 
regarded  as  the  most  agreeable  of  men,  and  the  most 
desirable  of  associates  in  the  calling  to  which  they  had 
both  been  bred.  In  1784,  when  even  Franklin  was  too 
old  for  the  offer  of  a  partnership  in  a  printing  office, 
Strahan  was  still  urging  him  to  come  as  a  guest  to 
England,  and  to  stay  there  for  good  and  all.  What 
Franklin  thought  of  Strahan  may  be  gathered  from  the 
fact  that  he  forgave  him  his  votes  in  favour  of  North's 
policy :  a  forgiveness  which  he  conveyed  in  a  letter  of 
grim,  and  for  him  rather  heavy-handed,  raillery.1  Charles 

1  "Philadelphia  :  5th  July,  1775. 

"  Mr.  Strahan,  —  You  are  a  member  of  Parliament,  and  one  of  that 
majority  which  has  doomed  my  country  to  destruction.  You  have  begun 
to  burn  our  towns  and  murder  our  people.  Look  upon  your  hands.  They 
are  stained  with  the  blood  of  your  relations !  You  and  I  were  long  friends. 
You  are  now  my  enemy,  and  I  am  Yours, 

"B.  FRANKLIN." 

There  was  some  excuse  for  a  French  editor  who  took  the  letter  in  sad 
earnest. 


GENERAL   ELECTION  OF  1774  2O/ 

Fox  had  every  reason  to  be  satisfied,  for  he  had  secured 
what  in  those  facile  days  passed  for  an  ideal  parliamen- 
tary situation ;  —  the  membership  for  a  borough  repre- 
sented by  two  gentlemen  of  opposite  opinions,  of  whom 
both  were  easy  to  live  with,  and  one  had  plenty  of  money. 
The  electoral  calm  in  which  he  now  basked  was  in  strik- 
ing contrast  with  all  that  awaited  him  from  the  moment 
when  he  set  his  foot  on  the  Westminster  hustings. 

The  dissolution  found  Burke^  as  well  as  Fox,  at  sea 
with  regard  to  his  electioneering"prospects.  The  patron 
of  his  borough  was  tired  of  bringing  into  Parliament  pri- 
vate friends,  from  whom  he  was  loth  to  take  a  shilling, 
and  who,  not  being  local  landowners,  could  do  noth- 
ing towards  helping  forward  his  own  election  for  the 
county.  Burke,  with  his  reverence  for  the  British  consti- 
tution as  it  existed,  recognised  the  situation  frankly,  and 
almost  sympathetically.  "  I  am  extremely  anxious,"  he 
wrote  to  Lord  Rockingham,  "  about  the  fate  of  Lord 
Verney  and  that  borough.  It  is  past  all  description, 
past  all  conception,  the  supineness,  neglect,  and  blind 
security  of  my  friend.  He  will  be  cheated,  if  he  is 
not  robbed."  But  none  the  less  the  blow  was  a  heavy 
one.  "  Sometimes  when  I  am  alone,"  (Burke's  letter 
proceeded",')  '"in  spite  of  all  my  efforts  I  fall  into  a 
melancholy  which  is  inexpressible.  Whether  I  ought 
not  totally  to  abandon  this  public  station,  for  which  I 
am  so  unfit,  and  have  of  course  been  so  unfortunate, 
I  know  not.  Most  assuredly  I  never  will  put  my  feet 
within  the  door  of  St.  Stephen's  chapel  without  being 
as  much  my  own  master  as  hitherto  I  have  been." 
Lord  Rockingham  hastened  to  relieve  his  friend's  solici- 
tude, and  placed  at  his  disposal  one  of  his  own  seats 
at  Malton.  While  travelling  thither  Burke  learned  that 
there  were  other  public  thieves  busy  at  election  time 
besides  those  who  frequented  the  waiting-room  at  the 
Treasury,  for  he  was  stopped  by  two  highwaymen  on 
Finchley  Common.  In  the  same  week  the  Prime  Min- 
ister met  the  same  fate.  The  perils  of  the  road,  at  a 
season  when  the  lot  of  a  politician  was  already  hard 


208  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

enough  without  them,  may  be  estimated  by  the  circum- 
stance that  Lord  North  set  out  on  his  journey  expecting 
to  be  robbed,  while  Burke's  feeling  was  surprise  at  his 
good  fortune  in  never  having  been  robbed  before. 

A  compliment  was  in  store  for  Burke  more  valuable 
even  than  the  confidence  and  affection  of  a  Rockingham. 
Many  of  the  citizens  of  Bristol  had  had  enough  of  scan- 
dals and  disorders  at  homeland  in  the  colonies,  and  were 
desirous  of  lighting  upon  a  representative  who  had  stud- 
ied business  in  its  larger  aspect,  and  who  understood 
the  close  connection  between  sound  trade  and  good 
government.  They  found  their  man  in  Burke ;  and  he 
had  just  been  chaired  at  Malton  when  he  received  an 
invitation  to  contest  Bristol.  He  placed  down  no  money. 
He  would  give  no  pledges.  Even  about  America  he 
promised  nothing  but  impartial  consideration  of  matters 
deeply  concerning  the  interests  of  a  commercial  com- 
munity which  still  claimed  to  be  the  second  port  in  the 
•  kingdom.  To  borrow  a  phrase  from  the  vocabulary  of 
j  transatlantic  politics,  he  ran  upon  his  record ;  and  a 
grand  record  it  was,  as  he  laid  it  before  the  people  of 
Bristol  in  the  speech  which  he  delivered  at  the  moment 
of  his  arrival  amongst  them.  "  When  I  first  devoted 
myself  to  the  public  service,  I  considered  how  I  should 
render  myself  fit  for  it ;  and  this  I  did  by  endeavouring 
to  discover  what  it  was  that  gave  this  country  the  rank 
it  holds  in  the  world.  I  found  that  our  prosperity  and 
dignity  arose  from  our  constitution  and  our  commerce. 
Both  these  I  have  spared  no  study  to  understand,  and 
no  endeavour  to  support.  I  now  appear  before  you  to 
make  trial  whether  my  earnest  endeavours  have  been 
so  wholly  oppressed  by  the  weakness  of  my  abilities  as 
to  be  rendered  insignificant  in  the  eyes  of  a  great  trad- 
ing city.  This  is  my  trial  to-day.  My  industry  is  not 
on  trial.  Of  my  industry  I  am  sure."  He  had  not 
slept,  he  said,  from  the  time  that  he  received  their  sum- 
mons to  the  time  that  he  was  addressing  them  in  their 
Guildhall;  and,  if  he  was  chosen  their  member,  he 
would  be  as  far  from  slumbering  and  sleeping,  when 


GENERAL  ELECTION  OF  i-ftt  209 


their  service  required  him  to  be  awake,  as  he  had  been 
when  coming  to  offer  himself  as  a  candidate  for  their 
favour. 

It  was  a  noble  compact,  and  on  his  side  it  was  nobly 
kept.  He""came  victorious  out  of  a  struggle  so  pro- 
tracted, and  to  his  leading  supporters  so  terribly  expen- 
sive, that  it  might  well  have  aroused,  in  a  mind  acute 
as  his,  some  faint  suspicion  that  the  British  constitution 
required  not  only  defending  but  amending.  His  col- 
league, by  one  of  those  freaks  of  luck  which  so  often 
allot  to  men,  'otherwise  obscure,  a  conspicuous  but  un- 
comfortable niche  in  history,  will  pass  to  the  end  of  time 
as  the  prototype  of  a  political  nonentity.  But,  in  truth, 
he  had  both  spirit  ImdTlibility,  and  could  explain  himself 
with  effect  not  only  to  a  throng  of  triumphant  partisans, 
but,  as  was  afterwards  shown  on  many  occasions,  to  a 
hostile  House  of  Commons.  At  the  declaration  of  the 
poll,  so  far  from  saying  "  ditto  to  Mr.  Burke,"  Mr.  Cru- 
ger  spoke  first  ;  and  a  good  third  of  Mr.  Burke's  speech 
consisted  in  a  statement  of  the  points  on  which  he 
differed  from  Mr.  Cruger. 

In  many  other  constituencies  besides  Bristol  there 
was  plenty  of  independence,  and  little  flagrant  corrup- 
tion. It  was  to  an  unusual  degree  a  country  gentle- 
man's election.  The  King,  so  far  back  as  August,  had 
prophesied  that  a  dissolution  would  fill  the  House  with 
men  of  landed  property,  as  the  Nabobs,  Planters,  and 
other  volunteers  were  not  ready  for  the  battle.  There 
was  less  money  forthcoming  than  on  the  last  occasion  ; 
and,  which  was  more  to  the  purpose,  people  needed  to 
be  very  cautious  how  they  spent  what  they  were  pre- 
pared to  part  with.  Mr.  Grenville's  Act  (as  Horace 
Walpole  said)  now  hung  out  all  its  terrors.  The  rich 
Londoners  had  been  taken  by  surprise,  and  did  not 
venture  at  that  eleventh  hour  to  throw  about  their  guin- 
eas and  banknotes.  The  squires  who  lived  close  at 
hand,  and  who  loved  to  entertain  even  where  there  was 
nothing  to  be  got  by  it,  had  established  a  claim  on  the 
suffrages  of  rural  boroughs  by  a  course  of  hospitality 
VOL.  i.  p 


210  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

which  no  laws,  except  those  of  health,  could  punish. 
It  was  not  a  crime  for  a  host,  who  himself  took  his 
share,  to  give  his  friend  a  couple  of  bottles  of  wine  and 
half  a  bowl  of  punch,  and  provide  him  with  a  bed  in 
which  to  sleep  them  off.  And  again  the  large  propri- 
etors, who  could  afford  to  set  aside  a  square  mile  of 
grass  from  the  plough  and  the  dairy  farm,  had  at  their 
disposal  abundant  material  for  sustaining  their  influence 
and  popularity.  A  great  family,  which  represented  a 
great  town,  made  little  of  keeping  up  a  herd  of  five  or 
six  hundred  deer  for  the  express  object  of  supplying 
the  Corporation  banquets,  and  the  private  tables  of  im- 
portant citizens.  The  breaking-up  of  a  deer-park  was  in 
those  days  regarded  as  an  infallible  symptom  that  the 
owner  of  it  had  done  with  electioneering.  "  Harry  Mills 
was  with  me  yesterday,"  (so  runs  a  letter  which  is  worth 
quoting,)  "  and  says  it  now  begins  to  be  suspected  by  Sir 
John  Trevylian's  friends  that  he  does  not  mean  to  offer 
himself  again  for  Newcastle.  It  is  affirmed  that  he  is 
going  to  dispark  Roadley,  and  lay  it  out  in  farms.  All 
your  Newcastle  friends  have  been  served  with  venison. 
And  indeed  I  do  not  think  there  can  be  a  more  success- 
ful battery  played  off  against  a  Corporation  than  one 
plentifully  supplied  with  venison  and  claret."  This  let- 
ter was  addressed  in  1777  to  Stoney  Bowes,  who  had 
just  been  beaten  in  a  bye-election  for  Newcastle-on- 
Tyne  by  the  head  of  a  family  which  had  represented 
that  city,  with  a  few  short  intervals,  for  more  than  a 
century.1 

Apart  altogether  from  what  he  gave  them,  the  free- 
men and  freeholders  preferred  a  neighbour  for  his  own 
sake;  and,  whoever  else  had  a  chance  against  him,  a 
courtier  had  none.  Where  bribery,  (said  Horace  Wai- 
pole,)  was  out  of  the  question,  they  would  give  their 

1  Report  of  the  Society  of  Antiquaries  of  Newcastle-on-Tyne  for  1857. 
Bowes  was  the  original  of  Barry  Lyndon,  and  a  still  greater  scoundrel,  with 
an  even  more  extraordinary  story.  Thackeray,  by  a  stroke  of  genius,  turned 
him  from  a  mean  hound  into  a  swaggering  ruffian  ;  and  such  as  Thackeray 
made  him,  he  will  remain. 


GENERAL  ELECTION  OF  1774  2 1 1 

votes  to  a  man  of  birth  who  resided  in  their  own  district, 
or  to  a  clever  talking  candidate  from  a  distance  who 
could  show  them  a  specimen  of  the  style  in  which  he 
would  denounce  sinecures  if  they  sent  him  to  Parlia- 
ment. But  from  neither  of  those  two  classes  did  Wai- 
pole  hope  for  any  advantage  to  the  nation.  The  country 
gentlemen  were  bitterly  angry  with  the  colonists ;  and, 
as  for  the  bustling  politicians,  the  King  would  still  be 
able  to  buy  the  representatives  themselves,  though  the 
representatives  did  not  venture  to  buy  the  electors. 
And  so  his  Majesty  appeared  to  think  ;  for,  as  soon  as 
the  first  contests  had  been  decided,  he  directed  the  Sec- 
retary of  the  Treasury  to  let  him  see  the  names  of  those 
who  had  been  successful,  tabulated  under  the  heads  of 
"  Pro,"  "  Con,"  and  "  Doubtful." 

Walpole's  belief  that  the  new  House  of  Commons 
would  be  no  less  compliant  than  the  last  were  shared  by 
even  abler  men  who  watched  our  politics  from  without. 
That  was  the  sense  in  which  the  Prussian  Minister  wrote 
to  Potsdam ;  and  the  old  King  replied  that  he  never 
expected  otherwise,  as  he  had  long  known  that  money 
was  the  mainspring  of  the  British  Constitution.1  Frank- 
lin, from  what  he  saw  of  the  elections,  went  so  far  as  to 
doubt  whether  there  was  any  use  in  having  a  House  of 
Commons.  "  Since  a  Parliament,"  he  wrote,  "  is  al- 
ways to  do  as  a  ministry  would  have  it,  why  should  we 
not  be  governed  by  the  ministry  in  the  first  instance  ? 
They  could  afford  to  govern  us  much  cheaper,  the  Par- 
liament being  a  very  expensive  machine,  that  requires  a 
great  deal  of  oiling  and  greasing  at  the  people's  charge." 
But,  dark  as  the  future  was,  it  contained  an  element  of 
hope  which  escaped  these  sharp-sighted  observers. 
They  had  reckoned  without  the  country  gentlemen 
who  sate  for  their  own  boroughs,  and  the  still  greater 
country  gentlemen  who  had  been  chosen  by  the  Coun- 
ties. Of  the  former  sort  there  were  many  more  than 
in  the  last  Parliament.  The  price  of  seats  was  lower 
by  from  thirty  to  forty  per  cent.,  and  was  soon  to  be 

1  Le  Roi  Frederic  au  Comte  de  Maltzan  ,-14  November,  1774. 

P2 


212  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

lower  still ;  for  a  membership  of  Parliament,  like  a  com- 
mission  in  the  army,  ruled  highest  in  time  of  assured 
peace,  and  fell  to  next  to  nothing  by  the  end  of  a  long 
war.  Gibbon,  who  was  a  country  gentleman  against 
his  will,  and  who  remained  one  no  longer  than  the  first 
moment  when  he  could  find  a  purchaser  for  the  last  of 
his  acres,  was  sent  to  Westminster  by  a  Cornish  kins- 
man at  the  general  election  of  1774.  For  some  time  he 
was  left  in  ignorance  whether  his  borough  would  be 
Liskeard  or  St.  Germans.  All  that  he  knew  was  that 
He  would  have  to  contribute  the  half  of  two  thousand 
four  hundred  pounds,  and  that  Mr.  Eliot  would  consent 
to  payment  being  postponed  until  his  second  son,  who 
was  a  lad  of  thirteen,  had  come  of  age.  Those  terms, 
even  as  between  relatives,  indicated  a  very  different 
state  of  the  market  from  that  which  prevailed  in  1798, 
when  George  Selwyn  got  nine  thousand  for  the  double 
seat  at  Ludgershall.  A  bill  for  twelve  hundred  pounds, 
or  twelve  thousand  either,  bearing  no  interest,  and  with 
eight  years  to  run,  would  have  been  within  the  compass 
even  of  Charles  Fox ;  and  there  is  no  wonder  that,  at 
such  prices,  a  patron  with  a  fair  share  of  public  spirit 
preferred  to  sit  himself,  or  to  keep  his  borough  within 
the  family.  Indeed,  a  man  who  cared  nothing  for  the 
commonwealth,  and  had  a  single  eye  to  the  main  chance, 
might  well  take  the  same  course ;  for  there  was  every 
prospect  that  a  member,  however  cheaply  he  got  into 
Parliament,  when  once  there  would  be  able  to  sell  him- 
self for  as  much  as  ever. 

The  County  members  formed  a  class  by  themselves, 
and  a  class  to  whom  the  nation  owes  an  incalculable 
debt.  They  were  great  proprietors  of  long  standing  in 
their  neighbourhood,  and  true  aristocrats,  indifferent  to 
the  frowns  and  favours  of  the  central  government; 
while  they  were  as  proud  of  the  confidence  of  their  con- 
stituents as  of  the  extent  of  their  domains,  the  age  of 
their  castles,  and  the  running  of  their  horses.  The 
vast  sums  which  leading  families  spent  over  a  County 
contest  are  already  inconceivable  to  us  who  hear  men 


GENERAL   ELECTION  OF  1774  213 

of  property  grumble  at  having  to  find  twelve  or  fifteen 
hundred  pounds  where  their  ancestors  coolly  and  com- 
placently laid  down  twice  as  many  thousands.  The 
explanation  is  that,  in  the  eighteenth  century,  the  posi- 
tion of  a  County  member  was  valued  for  itself,  and  not 
for  what  it  might  lead  to.  A  rural  potentate,  who  sate 
for  the  shire  in  which  he  lived,  was  thought  as  good 
as  a  lord,  and  was  a  great  deal  better  liked,  on  his  own 
countryside,  in  the  London  clubs,  and  especially  within 
the  walls  of  Parliament.  The  House  of  Commons  took 
a  domestic  interest  in  a  distinction  which  reflected  credit 
on  itself.  Mr.  Coke  of  Norfolk,  with  fifty  thousand  a 
year  in  his  county,  represented  it  for  more  than  fifty 
years,  and  did  not  accept  a  peerage  until  long  after  his 
brother  members  had  hailed  him  with  an  admiring  cheer 
the  first  time  that  he  walked  down  the  floor  after  hav- 
ing had  a  son  born  to  him  at  the  age  of  seventy-six. 
The  belief  that  the  Upper  and  Lower  Houses  ought 
to  be  kept  apart,  and  that  their  own  was  the  finer  insti- 
tution of  the  two,  was  held  not  only  by  members  of 
Parliament,  but  by  the  people  who  elected  them.  The 
freeholders  of  Somersetshire  went  so  far  as  to  pledge 
themselves  not  to  vote  for  the  brother  or  the  son  of  a 
peer  of  the  realm,  or  for  any  candidate  whom  a  peer 
supported.1  It  was  a  sentiment  not  of  recent,  and 
certainly  not  of  democratic,  origin;  for  the  feeling  of 
Somersetshire  had  long  ago  been  expressed,  with  a 
vigour  that  left  nothing  to  be  desired,  by  the  most  cele- 
brated Tory  who  ever  killed  a  fox  within  its  confines. 
"It  is  true,"  said  Squire  Western,  "there  be  larger 
estates  in  the  kingdom,  but  not  in  this  county.  Besides, 
most  o'  zuch  great  estates  be  in  the  hands  of  lords,  and 
I  hate  the  very  name  of  themmum." 

The  honour  of  representing  a  shire  was  neither  con- 
ferred lightly,  nor  retained  easily.  A  candidate,  whether 
he  presented  himself,  or  whether  he  was  put  forward  by 
a  junta  of  local  grandees,  if  his  name  was  unfavourably 

1  History  of  the  Boroughs  of  Great  Britain ;  London,  1 794,  vol.  iL, 
p.  44. 


214  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION' 

received  by  the  freeholders  in  county-meeting  assem- 
bled, would  find  at  the  declaration  of  the  poll  that  he 
had  lost  his  money  and  his  labour.  Those  freeholders 
did  not  love  a  new  man;  and  they  interpreted  the  phrase 
in  a  manner  creditable  to  themselves  and  to  the  object 
of  their  choice.  "  I  cannot,"  Gibbon  wrote  to  his  friend 
Holroyd,  "yet  think  you  ripe  for  a  County  member. 
Five  years  are  very  little  to  remove  the  obvious  objec- 
tion of  a  novus  Jiomo,  and  of  all  objections  it  is  perhaps 
the  most  formidable.  Seven  more  years  of  an  active 
life  will  spread  your  fame  among  the  great  body  of  the 
Freeholders,  and  to  them  you  may  one  day  offer  your- 
self on  the  most  honourable  footing,  that  of  a  candidate 
whose  real  services  to  the  County  have  deserved,  and 
will  repay,  the  favour  which  he  then  solicits." 

The  County  electors  proved  a  man  before  they  took 
him ;  but  none  the  less  they  were  careful  to  see  that  the 
services  which  he  promised  were  duly  given.  Confi- 
dence, with  them,  was  not  an  empty  word ;  and  they 
permitted  their  representative  an  almost  boundless  lati- 
tude of  action  at  Westminster,  demanding  only  that  he 
should  not  be  inactive.  They  expected  that  he  should 
attend  diligently  and  faithfully  to  the  business  of  the 
nation,  all  the  more  because  they  were  ready  to  allow 
that  he  understood  that  business  better  than  themselves. 
George  Selwyn,  as  a  borough  member,  soon  found  that 
his  constituents  troubled  themselves  very  little  about 
what  he  did,  or  left  undone,  so  long  as  he  refrained 
from  cutting  off  their  water  supply,  which  came  from  a 
hill  on  his  estate ;  and  was  at  the  pains  of  forwarding 
to  the  Prince  of  Wales,  with  the  compliments  of  the 
Corporation,  their  annual  offering  of  a  lamprey  pie. 
When  he  played  truant  during  a  political  crisis,  they 
were  personal  friends,  and  not  electors,  who  appealed 
to  his  loyalty  towards  George  the  Third  and,  where  that 
failed,  to  his  self-interest.  "  You  are  now,"  wrote  Lord 
Bolingbroke  in  1 767,  "  attending  a  sick  friend ;  but  I 
believe  the  Earls  will  think  you  have  neglected  the  first 
of  all  duties,  that  of  being  ready  to  vote  as  they  order. 


GENERAL  ELECTION  OF  1774  215 

In  short,  George,  you  who  love  your  namesake,  and 
hate  to  see  a  poor  helpless  young  man  like  himself  op- 
pressed by  the  obstinacy  of  such  men  as  George  Gren- 
ville  and  Lord  Rockingham,  must  fly  to  his  assistance. 
Consider  the  obligations  you  have  to  him,  and  do  not 
let  him  be  forced  to  give  your  place  away  to  somebody 
who  will  attend."  When  Selwyn  was  longer  absent 
from  town  than  usual,  his  correspondents,  writing  with 
quite  sufficient  breadth  of  detail,  affected  to  believe  that 
he  was  detained  by  the  attractions  of  a  lady;  —  a  sup- 
position which,  as  applied  to  him,  passed  in  that  cir- 
cle for  the  height  of  irony.  But  the  movements  of  a 
County  representative  were  subjected  to  a  much  more 
jealous  scrutiny.  "The  member  of  St.  Germans  might 
lurk  in  the  country,  but  the  Knight  of  Cornwall  must 
attend  the  House  of  Commons."  So  wrote  Gibbon 
about  his  cousin  Mr.  Eliot,  with  a  lazy  sense  of  supe- 
riority very  consolatory  to  a  man  of  letters  who  had 
already  discovered  himself  to  be  no  debater,  and  was 
beginning  to  suspect  that  he  was  not  meant  for  a  mem- 
ber of  Parliament. 

The  great  country  gentlemen  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons entertained  the  prejudices  of  their  order ;  and 
some  among  them  had  their  full  allowance  of  faults  as 
individuals ;  but  they  felt  that  consciousness  of  respon- 
sibility which  animates  a  race  of  men  who,  over  and 
over  again,  and  time  out  of  mind,  have  decided  the  fate 
of  a  nation.  They  and  their  forerunners,  for  a  century 
and  a  half  back,  had  borne  their  share  in  those  succes- 
sive political  reactions  which,  in  defiance  of  strict  logic, 
had  saved  England  alternately  from  arbitrary  power 
and  factious  violence.  Foresight  was  not  their  strong 
point,  particularly  when  it  was  a  question  of  running 
counter  to  the  wishes  of  the  sovereign.  They  never 
had  been  very  quick  to  detect  and  withstand  the  early 
stages  of  a  dangerous  policy ;  but,  in  the  last  resort, 
they  were  not  going  to  see  their  country  ruined.  More- 
over their  hands  were  pure.  Quiet  folks  in  the  villages, 
who  were  well  aware  that  their  own  part  in  a  system 


2l6  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

based  upon  profusion  and  venality  was  to  get  nothing 
and  pay  for  everything,  never  felt  so  comfortable  as 
when  they  were  represented  at  St.  Stephen's  by  a  man 
who  desired  to  be  no  greater  or  richer  than  he  was, 
whether  the  motive  of  his  contentment  was  personal 
pride,  or  public  spirit,  or  both  of  them  together.  Those 
County  magnates,  who  likewise  were  County  members, 
detested  placemen  as  cordially  as  did  their  constituents. 
The  most  important  division,  both  in  its  moral  and 
political  aspects,  which  took  place  between  the  adoption 
of  the  Grand  Remonstrance  and  the  Second  Reading 
of  the  Great  Reform  Bill,  was  on  the  occasion  when, 
in  April  1780,  Parliament  was  called  upon  to  declare 
that  the  growing  influence  of  the  Crown  was  disastrous 
to  the  nation.  In  that  division  sixty-two  among  the 
English  County  members  voted  for  the  Resolution,  and 
only  seven  against  it. 

Holding  their  heads  high,  these  men  did  not  esteem 
themselves  as  delegates,  and  still  less  as  courtiers,  but  as 
senators  in  the  true  sense  of  the  term ;  and  not  even  the 
Roman  senate,  in  its  most  powerful  days,  was  more 
supremely  indifferent  to  the  pressure  of  outside  forces. 
Party  organisation,  as  we  know  it,  was  not  then  in  exist- 
ence. A  man  who  asked  nothing  from  the  Govern- 
ment was  free  to  take  his  own  line.  If  he  was  not 
himself  a  leader,  he  sought  for  direction  from  those  of 
his  colleagues  whose  judgement  he  trusted,  and  who  put 
forward  their  views  in  a  manner  which  pleased  his  taste 
and  persuaded  his  reason.  The  very  last  quarter  to 
which  he  would  look  for  guidance  was  the  daily  press, 
at  a  time  when  reporters  were  almost  sure  to  be  excluded 
from  a  debate  on  any  question  by  which  opinion  was 
deeply  stirred,  and  when  editors  were  much  too  afraid 
of  the  Speaker's  Warrant  to  be  formidable  censors,  or 
frank  and  effective  counsellors.  The  more  sessions  a 
House  of  Commons  had  sat ;  the  more  good  speeches 
it  had  heard  ;  and  the  further  it  was  removed  from  a 
general  election,  with  all  the  opportunity  for  the  exertion 
of  illegitimate  influence  which  at  such  a  time  a  bad  min- 


GENERAL  ELECTION  OF  1774  21 7 

istry  enjoyed;  —  the  better  instrument  it  became  for 
conducting  the  business  of  the  country.  That  was  the 
deliberate  opinion  of  Burke ;  and  he  held  it  so  strongly 
that  he  refused  to  support  any  proposal  for  shortening 
the  duration  of  parliaments.  So  greatly,  he  said,  were 
members  affected  by  weighty  arguments,  cleverly  put, 
that  it  was  worth  any  man's  while  to  take  pains  to  speak 
well ;  and  if,  like  Charles  Fox,  he  spoke  well  whether 
he  took  pains  or  not,  such  a  Parliament  as  that  in  which 
he  now  found  himself  was  the  very  arena  for  an  orator. 
He  had  fallen  on  days  when  rhetoric  was  at  a  premium, 
if  only  it  was  spontaneous;  if  it  had  good  sense  behind  it; 
and  if  the  quarter  from  which  it  came  was  favourably  re- 
garded by  those  for  whose  benefit  it  was  produced.  Aris- 
tocrats to  the  core,  they  lent  their  ears  the  more  readily 
to  one  of  themselves ;  and  the  titles  of  Fox  to  rank  as  an 
aristocrat,  though  abnormal,  were  generally  and  willingly 
recognised.  His  grandfather  on  the  one  side  had  been 
with  Charles  the  First  on  the  scaffold.  His  great-great- 
grandfather on  the  other  side  had  stood  to  the  same 
monarch  in  a  much  nearer  relation ;  and  the  world  had 
changed  too  little  since  the  days  of  Morrmouth.and  the 
Duke  of  Berwick  for  men  of  the  world  to  trouble  them- 
selves greatly  about  the  obliquity  of  the  channel  through 
which  royal  blood  flowed  in  the  veins  of  one  whom  they 
liked,  and,  to  their  surprise,  were  beginning  even  to  re- 
spect. Charles  had  led  his  contemporaries,  and  only  too 
many  of  his  elders,  in  a  career  of  fashion  and  folly ;  as  he 
was  now  to  lead  them,  with  a  pre-eminence  equally  un- 
disputed, along  more  arduous  and  reputable  paths.  He 
sprang  from  a  line  of  statesmen,  conspicuous  in  place 
and  long  in  years,  though  not  in  numbers ;  for  Stephen 
Fox  was  serving  the  Crown  four  generations  before  ever 
his  grandson  entered  public  life.  That  grandson  had 
now  the  authority  of  an  old  member  in  a  fresh  Parlia- 
ment, which  only  knew  his  scrapes  by  hearsay,  and, 
(whatever  might  be  the  case  with  its  successor,)  was  not 
destined  to  witness  a  repetition  of  them.  Eloquent  and 
attractive,  kindly  and  familiar  with  high  and  humble, 


2l8  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

he  was  inspired  by  a  great  cause  with  the  new  and 
needed  qualities  of  patience,  industry,  and  caution.  In 
six  years  he  acquired  over  his  colleagues  a  mastery  which, 
if  the  next  dissolution  had  been  deferred  for  another 
twelvemonth,  would  have  made  him,  (what  he  soon 
afterwards  became,  and  but  for  the  unwisdom  of  a 
moment  might  have  remained,)  the  master  of  the  coun- 
try. But  that  House  of  Commons,  before  it  passed 
away,  —  teachable  by  events,  and  great  in  spite  of  errors, 
—  had  dealt  a  mortal  blow  to  the  famous  system  which 
the  King  and  Bute,  with  the  potent  aid  of  Charles  Fox's 
father,  had  constructed.  It  was  a  system  which,  as  its 
one  achievement  of  the  first  order,  brought  about  the 
American  war,  and  so  made  England  sick,  once  and  for 
all,  of  the  very  name  of  Personal  Government. 

But  the  lesson  had  not  been  learned  when,  late  in 
November  1774,  the  Parliament  met.  For  all  that  ap- 
peared on  the  surface,  there  was  nothing  to  distinguish 
the  occasion  from  others.  Few  signs  were  visible  of 
serious  dissatisfaction,  or  even  of  widespread  interest. 
The  King's  speech  began  as  usual  with  a  tirade  against 
the  province  of  Massachusetts,  and  a  guarded  allusion 
to  the  spirit  of  disaffection  prevalent  in  the  other  colo- 
nies ;  and  the  Opposition  went  to  work  in  their  desultory 
fashion.  They  confined  themselves  to  asking  for  copies 
of  the  official  correspondence  relating  to  America;  and 
for  leave  to  defer  making  up  their  minds  till  further 
information  had  been  given  ;  but,  small  as  was  the  de- 
mand which  they  made  upon  the  courage  of  their  party, 
they  only  succeeded  in  rallying  seventy-three  adherents. 
Even  this  paltry  skirmish  was  as  jealously  guarded  from 
the  eyes  of  unprivileged  spectators  as  the  Potsdam  ma- 
noeuvres. The  precincts  were  cleared  of  all  strangers 
except  members  of  the  Irish  Parliament,  who  were 
allowed  what  was  for  them  the  very  superfluous  op- 
portunity of  witnessing  how  smoothly  things  went  in  a 
Deliberative  Assembly  which  was  managed  by  bribery. 
Charles  Fox  gave  the  new  House  a  first  taste  of  his 


WINTER  SESSION  OF  1774  2l<) 

quality,  and  denounced  the  closing  of  the  gallery  as  a 
mere  trick  to  stifle  inquiry ;  to  shorten  debate ;  and  to 
enable  ministers  to  maintain  a  convenient  silence,  and 
an  air  of  unconcern  which,  alarming  as  they  must  have 
known  the  state  of  the  nation  to  be,  with  characteristic 
effrontery  they  still  professed  to  feel. 

In  spite  of  all  precautions  against  publicity,  one  sen- 
tence got  abroad  which  threw  as  much  light  on  the  in- 
tentions of  the  Government  as  many  speeches ;  for  Lord 
North  contrived  to  say  that  the  last  Parliament  had 
been  a  good  one.  He  said  it  with  Wilkes  opposite  him, 
whose  presence  in  the  existing  House  of  Commons  was 
an  unspoken  but  unanswerable  condemnation  of  the 
House  which  had  preceded  it.  For  six  years  the  law 
had  been  strained  and  violated,  popular  rights  had  been 
trampled  under  foot,  disorder  had  been  provoked,  and 
blood  been  shed ;  and  all  this  had  been  done  in  order  to 
establish  the  contention,  —  not  that  John  Wilkes  had 
been  unduly  elected,  —  but  that  he  was  unfit  and  un- 
worthy then,  or  ever,  to  be  a  member  of  Parliament. 
And  now  he  was  visible  on  his  bench,  with  his  colleague 
for  Middlesex,  and  three  out  of  the  four  members  for 
London  City,  round  him ;  all  of  whom  had  signed  a 
paper  which  virtually  was  an  agreement  to  do  as  Wilkes 
bade  them.  There  he  sate,  in  secure  anticipation  of 
that  popularity  which,  in  the  most  good-natured  of 
assemblies,  awaits  a  man  whom  it  has  taken  special  and 
notorious  pains  to  keep  outside  its  doors.  In  order  to 
prevent  his  election  George  the  Third  had  been  prepared 
copiously  to  administer  those  "  gold  pills  "  by  which  he 
thought  it  becoming  for  a  King  of  England  to  influence 
public  opinion.  He  had  compassed  town  and  country 
in  vain  to  find  Wilkes  an  opponent,  and  had  urged  the 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury  to  set  the  Middlesex  election 
"  again  on  float,"  after  Mr.  Robinson  himself  had  pro- 
nounced it  as  past  praying,  or  paying,  for.  It  was,  in- 
deed, a  pill  too  bitter  to  be  gilded.  Wilkes  could  not 
be  excluded  from  Parliament,  and  still  less  could  he  be 
ejected  when  once  he  had  got  there;  for  no  candidate 


22O  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

would  face  the  crowd  at  Brentford,  and  no  minister  cared 
to  have  Wilkes  and  America  on  his  hands  at  the  same 
moment.  There  was  something  heroic  in  the  compla- 
cent dignity  with  which  Johnson,  (writing,  it  can  hardly 
be  doubted,  on  a  hint  from  the  Minister,)  announced 
that  the  most  awkward  of  customers  was  at  last  to  be 
left  with  all  the  honours  of  victory.  "  They,"  said  the 
Doctor,  "  who  are  still  filling  our  ears  with  Mr.  Wilkes, 
lament  a  grievance  that  is  now  at  an  end.  Mr.  Wilkes 
may  be  chosen,  if  any  will  choose  him  ;  and  the  prece- 
dent of  his  exclusion  makes  not  any  honest  or  decent 
man  think  himself  in  danger."  :  The  warning  which 
the  situation  contained,  if  George  the  Third  had  rightly 
interpreted  it,  would  have  been  cheaply  purchased  at  the 
price  of  even  a  deeper  humiliation.  For  the  aspect  of 
Wilkes  among  the  crowd  of  members,  cheerfully  listen- 
ing to  the  King's  Speech  at  the  bar  of  the  House  of 
Lords,  was  a  foretaste  of  the  scene  eleven  years  later  on 
when  Mr.  John  Adams,  the  accredited  Envoy  from  the 
United  States,  presented  himself  at  St.  James's  as  the 
first  of  all  his  fellow-citizens  to  stand  before  his  Majesty 
in  a  diplomatic  character. 

On  the  earliest  day  that  Parliament,  and  most  of  all  a 
new  Parliament,  is  assembled  after  a  troubled  and  event- 
ful recess,  inexperienced  politicians,  who  expect  great 
things,  are  surprised  to  find  that,  instead  of  being  very 
noisy  and  angry,  everybody  is  very  shy.  But  in  1774 
the  deadness  was  of  longer  duration  than  a  single  even- 
ing ;  for  it  was  in  the  men  and  not  in  the  moment.  The 
winter  session  ran  its  course.  Estimates  were  brought 
forward ;  soldiers,  sailors,  and  monies  were  voted  ;  and 
week  after  week  of  December  slipped  along  as  quietly 
as  if  the  affairs  of  an  empire,  at  peace  with  itself  through- 
out its  borders,  were  being  administered  by  a  cabinet 
of  Solons.  The  fact  was  that  the  principal  members  of 
the  Opposition  were  engaged  among  themselves  in  one 
of  their  periodical  discussions  of  a  proposal  which  had 

1  The  Patriot,  1774. 


WINTER  SESSION  OF  1774  221 

for  them  an  extraordinary  attraction,  and  on  which  they 
expended  as  much  ink,  in  trying  to  convince  each 
other,  as  would  have  covered  every  bookseller's  counter 
in  the  kingdom  with  pamphlets  showing  up  the  policy 
of  the  Government.  That  proposal,  to  use  their  own 
favourite  description,  was  a  plan  of  non-attendance  for 
Lord  Rockingham's  friends.  The  notion  was  that  Eng- 
land would  be  brought  to  her  senses  by  the  contempla- 
tion of  the  empty  benches.  For  very  shame  she  would 
gird  herself  to  the  task  of  fighting  her  own  political 
battles  until  such  time  as  she  could  prevail  on  her 
leaders  to  leave  their  tent,  and  place  themselves  once 
more  at  the  head  of  a  resolute  and  repentant  host  of 
followers.  The  prospect  was  nattering ;  and  the  Rock- 
inghams  would  long  ago  have  tried  the  experiment  but 
for  Burke,  who  told  them  that  their  secession  must  infal- 
libly result  in  the  Ministry  being  more  free  than  ever  for 
mischief,  and  in  their  being  themselves  forgotten  by  the 
public.  Till  the  Christmas  holidays,  however,  were  over 
they  could  defend  their  inactivity  by  the  excuse  that 
they  were  waiting  for  Papers.  On  the  nineteenth  of 
January  the  Papers  came.  Lord  North  presented  to  the 
House  a  collection  of  letters,  not  from  Massachusetts 
only,  but  from  the  governors  of  every  colony,  which 
proved  beyond  doubt  or  question  that  the  whole  conti- 
nent of  America,  from  New  Hampshire  to  Georgia,  had 
imitated,  and  in  many  instances  outstripped,  Boston  in 
what  the  King's  speech  had  described  as  violent  and 
criminal  resistance  and  disobedience  to  the  law. 

The  case  was  presented  in  a  style  which  might  well 
arouse  the  envy  of  a  modern  politician  whose  vocation  it 
has  been  to  pick  out  the  essential  incidents  in  a  long 
story  from  among  the  tiresome,  and  intricate,  details 
with  which  the  omnivorous  appetite  of  Parliament  has 
for  many  years  past  compelled  the  Foreign  Office,  and 
the  Colonial  Office,  to  load  its  table.  With  no  official 
jargon,  but  in  plain  Eighteenth-century  English,  such  as 
was  spoken  by  the  people  whose  deeds  were  being 
related,  and  by  the  members  of  Parliament  who  were  to 


222  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

read  the  papers,  the  Governors  and  Deputy  Governors 
set  forth  their  budget  of  disastrous  and  ominous  tidings. 
They  told  how  the  tea-ships  had  been  turned  away 
from  every  port  where  they  showed  themselves ;  how 
the  farmers  were  drilling  and  arming,  and  were  sinking 
the  boats  and  overturning  the  carts  which  conveyed  for- 
age and  provisions  for  the  use  of  the  army  ;  how  the 
Judges  had  cried  off  from  their  duties,  and  the  King's 
writ  had  altogether  ceased  to  run  ;  and  how  the  Governor 
of  New  Hampshire  had  just  completed  his  admirable 
arrangements  for  supplying  the  wants  of  the  garrison 
in  Boston  when  the  people  of  Portsmouth,  his  own  prin- 
cipal trading-town,  rose  upon  him,  stormed  his  arsenal, 
and  carried  off  a  hundred  barrels  of  powder.  The  one 
bright  spot  was  in  Virginia,  where,  when  the  House  of 
Burgesses  had  turned  themselves  into  a  Convention,  and 
met  without  leave  from  the  Governor,  the  Headmaster 
of  the  Grammar-school  had  refused  to  preach  them  a 
sermon ;  but,  as  the  Patriots  were  much  better  provided 
with  eloquence  than  with  ammunition,  the  news  from 
Williamsburg  did  not  counterbalance  the  serious  charac- 
ter of  the  news  from  Portsmouth.  Graver  by  far  than 
any  acted  manifestations  of  discontent  and  estrange- 
ment were  the  Resolutions  which  had  been  passed  at 
Philadelphia  by  that  Congress  in  which  Patrick  Henry 
and  the  Adamses  had  been  spokesmen,  and  Washing- 
ton a  guiding  spirit.  What  purpose,  human  or  divine, 
could  be  served  by  trying  to  dragoon  such  a  population, 
so  led  and  so  minded,  living  along  fifteen  hundred  miles 
of  coast  across  three  thousand  miles  of  ocean,  into  pay- 
ing a  threepenny  duty  into  the  British  Treasury  ? 

It  was  a  problem  striking  enough  to  impress  the  Poet 
Laureate.  Whitehead  thought  the  moment  come  for 
singing  a  word  in  season  to  the  address  of  his  Sover- 
eign, and  in  1775  he  thus  invoked  the  powers  who  guide 
the  hearts  of  kings  :  — 

"  Beyond  the  vast  Atlantic  tide 
Extend  your  healing  influence  wide 
Where  millions  claim  your  care. 


WINTER  SESSION  OF  1774  223 

Inspire  each  just,  each  filial  thought, 
And  let  the  nations  round  be  taught 
The  British  oak  is  there  ! " 

The  advice  was  well  meant;  but  it  fell  as  flat  as  the 
lines  in  which  it  was  couched.  Mason  has  commended 
Whitehead  for  insinuating  sound  counsel  into  the  royal 
ear,  in  the  shape  of  praise  for  wisdom  and  clemency 
which  George  the  Third,  unfortunately,  had  not  the 
slightest  intention  of  meriting.  The  Laureates  of  the 
eighteenth  century  were  not  of  those  to  whom  either 
kings  or  commoners  looked  for  a  contribution  to  the 
stock  of  political  wisdom ;  nor,  (except  in  the  case  of 
Warton,)  for  any  other  wisdom.  Mason,  a  stout  Whig, 
judged  favourably  of  Whitehead's  performances;  but 
Samuel  Johnson,  who  liked  his  politics  even  less  than 
his  poetry,  called  his  odes  "  insupportable  nonsense  " ; 
and  posterity,  irrespective  of  politics,  has  agreed  with 
Johnson.  Whitehead  won  his  spurs,  (if  that  phrase  can 
be  applied  to  the  rider  of  such  a  Pegasus,)  by  a  satire 
the  title  of  which  was  "An  Epistle  on  the  Danger  of 
Writing  in  Verse."  It  was  his  earliest  serious  perform- 
ance ;  and  it  would  have  been  well  if  the  reflections 
which  the  theme  suggested  had  warned  him  never  to 
attempt  another.  So  far  as  rhymes  can  throw  light 
upon  the  relations  of  George  the  Third  to  the  colonies, 
mankind  will  neglect  Whitehead,  and  turn  to  the  Birth- 
day Ode  of  another  bard  who  was  not  of  the  stuff  out 
of  which,  in  his  day,  a  Poet  Laureate  was  cut.  What 
Robert  Burns  thought  about  the  American  war,  and  the- 
policy  of  its  royal  author,  may  be  seen  in  the  fourth 
and  fifth  stanzas  of  "A  Dream,"  —  which  he  wrote, 
or  professed  to  have  written,  on  the  Fourth  of  June, 
1786.  The  poem  is  like  the  best  Aristophanes,  on 
those  occasions  when  Aristophanes  was  writing  with  a 
serious  political  purpose  underlying  his  humour  and  his 
fancy.  There  is  nothing  in  the  Choruses  of  the  Old 
Greek  Comedy  more  Attic,  in  every  essential  quality, 
than  the  admonition  addressed  to  the  Prince  of  Wales, 
the  advice  to  the  young  Princesses,  the  compliments  to 


224  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

Lord  Chatham  and  his  famous  son,  the  allusion  to  the 
loss  of  America,  and  the  homely  and  downright  judg- 
ment passed  upon  those  Ministers  whom,  during  the 
first  two  and  twenty  years  of  his  reign,  the  king  had 
delighted  to  honour. 

"  'Tis  very  true,  my  sovereign  king, 
My  skill  may  weel  be  doubted : 
But  facts  are  chiels  that  winna  ding, 

And  downa  be  disputed. 
Your  royal  nest,  beneath  your  wing, 

Is  e'en  right  reft  and  clouted; 
And  now  the  third  part  o'  the  string, 
An'  less  will  gang  about  it 
Than  did  ae  day. 

"  Far  be't  frae  me  that  I  aspire 

To  blame  your  legislation, 
Or  say  ye  wisdom  want,  or  fire 
To  rule  this  mighty  nation ! 
But,  faith  !  I  muckle  doubt,  my  Sire, 

Ye've  trusted  ministration 
To  chaps  wha  in  a  barn,  or  byre, 
Wad  better  fill'd  their  station 
Than  courts  yon  day." 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE    KING    AND    LORD     CHATHAM.       FOX    COMES    TO    THE 
FRONT.       THE   AMERICAN    FISHERIES 

THE  King  had  long  ago  settled  his  policy.  "  I  am 
clear,"  he  announced  to  Lord  North  in  the  previous 
September,  "  that  there  must  always  be  one  tax  to  keep 
up  the  right;  and,  as  such,  I  approve  of  the  Tea  Duty." 
To  secure  this  object  he  was  prepared  to  fight,  and  was 
in  a  hurry  to  begin.  Ten  days  before  Parliament  met, 
the  first  instalment  of  the  American  news  had  already 
reached  him.  "  I  am  not  sorry,"  he  wrote,  "  that  the 
line  of  conduct  seems  now  chalked  out,  which  the  en- 
closed despatches  thoroughly  justify.  The  New  Eng- 
land Governments  are  in  a  state  of  rebellion.  Blows 
must  decide  whether  they  are  to  be  subject  to  this 
country,  or  independent."  He  made  no  attempt  to 
conceal  his  satisfaction  when  he  learned  that  the  quar- 
rel could  not  be  patched  up ;  and  yet  he  did  not,  like 
Napoleon,  love  war  for  its  own  sake ;  nor,  like  Louis 
the  Fourteenth,  was  he  unscrupulously  eager  to  make  his 
country  great,  and  his  own  name  great  with  it.  Almost 
as  soon  as  he  mounted  the  throne  he  had  given  a  con- 
vincing proof  of  his  indifference  to  personal  glory  and 
national  aggrandisement.  At  a  time  of  life  when  the 
desire  of  fame  is  a  sign  of  virtue,  or  at  worst  a  venial 
fault,  during  the  height  of  the  most  triumphant  war  in 
which  Britain  has  been  engaged,  he  had  thrust  from 
power  the  ablest  war-minister  whose  deeds  have  been 
recorded  in  her  history  ;  and  he  deserted  the  greatest  ally 
we  ever  possessed,  at  the  exact  moment  of  that  ally's 
greatest  need.  To  the  end  of  his  days  Frederic  of  Prussia 
did  not  forget  the  pang  of  that  appalling  and  unexpected 

VOL.  I.  225  Q 


226  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

blow ;  and  we  were  soon  to  learn  that,  when  he  remem- 
bered an  injury,  he  was  not  of  a  nature  to  forgive  it. 
The  warlike  promptings  which  actuated  George  the 
Third  were  neither  ambitious  nor  patriotic,  but  political. 
He  looked  on  the  Americans  not  as  foreign  enemies 
arrayed  against  England,  but  as  Englishmen  who  wanted 
more  liberty  than  he  thought  was  good  for  them ;  and 
he  sent  his  fleets  and  his  armies  against  them  just  as 
he  would  have  ordered  his  Footguards  to  support  the 
constables  in  clearing  the  street  of  a  mob  of  Wilkites. 

On  one  point,  and  one  point  alone,  the  King  was  in 
agreement  with  the  great  statesman  out  of  whose  con- 
trol, as  the  first  act  of  his  reign,  he  had  taken  the  des- 
tinies of  the  country.  Chatham,  like  George  the  Third, 
regarded  the  colonists  as  compatriots.  In  his  sight  they 
were  Englishmen,  who  did  not  choose  to  be  taxed  with- 
out being  represented ;  Whigs,  who  had  not  abandoned 
the  principles  of  the  Great  Revolution ;  fellow-citizens, 
who  could  not  be  subjugated  without  prospective,  and 
even  imminent,  danger  to  the  liberties  of  both  our  own 
islands.  For  Ireland  had  as  much  at  stake  as  Great 
Britain,  and  Irishmen  of  all  religions  and  classes  were 
alive  and  awake  to  the  consequences  which  would  ensue 
at  home  if  the  cause  -of  America  was  overborne  and 
ruined.  In  such  a  contest,  (so  Chatham  insisted,)  every 
man  had  a  right,  or  rather  every  man  was  under  an 
obligation,  to  choose  his  side  in  accordance  with  the 
political  faith  which  was  in  him.  This  was  not  a  struggle 
against  an  external  foe,  but  a  dispute  within  our  own 
family.  "  I  trust,"  he  wrote  on  the  Christmas  eve  of 
1774,  "that  it  will  be  found  impossible  for  freemen  in 
England  to  wish  to  see  three  millions  of  Englishmen 
slaves  in  America."  A  month  afterwards  he  had  read 
the  parliamentary  papers,  with  the  insight  of  one  who 
had  received  and  answered  a  thousand  despatches  from 
the  same  regions.  "What  a  correspondence!"  he  ex- 
claimed. "  What  a  dialogue  between  Secretary  of  State 
and  General  in  such  a  crisis  !  Could  these  bundles  reach 
the  shades  below,  the  remarks  of  Ximenes  and  of  Cortez 


THE  KING  AND   CHATHAM  22? 

upon  them  would  be  amusing."  He  need  not  have 
brought  Ximenes  in.  When  Chatham  closed  the  vol- 
ume, a  yet  stronger  ruler  than  the  Spaniard,  and  one 
who  knew  even  better  how  to  write  to  colonies  and  how 
to  fight  for  them,  had  made  himself  master  of  the  miser- 
able narrative. 

Already,  before  he  knew  the  particulars,  the  heart  of 
Chatham  was  too  hot  for  silence.  As  the  doom  against 
America,  (to  use  his  own  phraseology,)  might  at  any 
hour  be  pronounced  from  the  Treasury  Bench,  no  time 
was  to  be  lost  in  offering  his  poor  thoughts  to  the  public, 
for  preventing  a  civil  war  before  it  was  inevitably  fixed. 
On  the  first  day  that  the  Lords  met  after  Christmas  he 
moved  to  address  his  Majesty  to  withdraw  the  troops 
from  Boston,  in  order  to  open  the  way  towards  a  happy 
settlement  of  the  dangerous  troubles  in  America.  It 
was  not  a  tactical  success.  Chatham  had  told  Rocking- 
ham  beforehand  that  he  intended  to  pronounce  himself 
against  insisting  on  that  theoretical  right  to  tax  America 
which  Rockingham's  own  government  had  asserted  in 
the  Declaratory  Act  of  1766.  Some  of  the  Whigs  were 
unwilling  to  throw  over  a  Statute  which,  in  its  day,  had 
formed  part  of  a  great  compromise.  Others  were  pre- 
pared to  consider  the  question  of  repealing  the  Act, 
whenever  that  "  proper  time  "  arrived  which  in  politics  is 
always  so  very  long  upon  its  journey.  The  more  pru- 
dent of  them  exerted  themselves  to  suppress  any  public 
manifestation  of  the  annoyance  which  their  party  felt. 
"  My  Lord,"  wrote  the  Duke  of  Manchester  to  his 
leader,  "  you  must  pardon  my  freedom.  In  the  present 
situation  of  affairs  nothing  can  be  so  advantageous  to 
Administration,  nothing  so  ruinous  to  opposition,  nothing 
so  fatal  to  American  liberty,  as  a  break  with  Lord  Chat- 
ham and  his  friends.  I  do  not  mean  to  overrate  his 
abilities,  or  to  despair  of  our  cause,  though  he  no  longer 
existed ;  but,  while  the  man  treads  this  earth,  his  name, 
his  successes,  his  eloquence,  the  cry  of  the  many,  must 
exalt  him  into  a  consequence  perhaps  far  above  his 
station."  But  the  resentment  of  the  Rockinghams  was 

Q3 


228  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

all  the  more  bitter  because  they  had  to  keep  it  among 
themselves.  In  their  communications  with  each  other 
they  charged  Chatham  with  the  two  unpardonable  Parlia- 
mentary crimes  of  forcing  their  hand,  and  taking  the 
wind  out  of  their  sails ;  and  in  the  House  they  supported 
him  reluctantly,  and  in  small  numbers. 

But  that  was  all  of  little  moment  compared  with  the 
fact  that  a  famous  and  faithful  servant  of  England  had 
made  known,  to  all  and  sundry,  his  view  of  the  conduct 
which,  at  that  complicated  crisis,  loyalty  to  England 
demanded.  William  Pitt,  then  in  his  sixteenth  year, 
had  helped  his  father  to  prepare  for  the  debate ;  a  pro- 
cess which,  according  to  the  experience  of  others  who 
enjoyed  the  same  privilege,  consisted  in  hearing  a  grand 
speech  delivered  from  an  arm-chair,  entirely  different  in 
arrangement,  in  wording,  and  in  everything  except  the 
doctrine  which  it  enforced,  from  the  series  of  grand 
speeches  which  next  day  were  declaimed  in  public 
when  the  orator  had  his  audience  around  him.1  "  The 
matter  and  manner,"  (so  the  lad  wrote  to  his  mother  on 
the  morning  after  the  discussion,)  "were  striking;  far 
beyond  what  I  can  express.  It  was  everything  that  was 
superior;  and,  though  it  had  not  the  desired  effect  on 
an  obdurate  House  of  Lords,  it  must  have  had  an  infi- 
nite effect  without  doors,  the  bar  being  crowded  with 
Americans.  Lord  Suffolk,  I  cannot  say  answered  him, 
but  spoke  after  him.  My  father  has  slept  well,  but  is 
lame  in  one  ankle  from  standing  so  long.  No  wonder 
he  is  lame.  His  first  speech  lasted  over  an  hour,  and 
the  second  half  an  hour ;  surely  the  two  finest  speeches 
that  ever  were  made  before,  unless  by  himself."  The 
most  notable  passage  was  that  in  which  Chatham  de- 
clared that  the  cause  of  America  was  the  cause  of  all 

1  "  I  was  at  Hayes,"  (said  Doctor  Franklin,)  "  early  on  Tuesday,  agreea- 
ble to  my  promise,  when  we  entered  into  consideration  of  the  plans  ;  but, 
though  I  stayed  near  four  hours,  his  Lordship,  in  the  manner,  I  think,  of 
all  eloquent  persons,  was  so  full  and  diffuse  in  supporting  every  particular 
I  questioned,  that  there  was  not  time  to  go  through  half  my  memorandums. 
He  is  not  easily  interrupted  ;  and  I  had  such  pleasure  in  hearing  him 
that  I  found  little  occasion  to  interrupt  him." 


THE  KING  AND   CHATHAM  2 29 

Irishmen,  Catholic  and  Protestant  alike,  and  of  all  true 
Whigs  in  England ;  and  in  his  mouth  the  name  of  Whig 
included  every  man  who  was  not  a  friend  to  arbitrary 
power.  The  colonists  were  our  countrymen ;  and,  if 
we  persisted  in  treating  them  as  aliens  and  foes,  the 
perils  which  awaited  us  were  incalculable.  Foreign 
war,  (so  he  told  the  House  of  Lords,)  was  at  our  door. 
France  and  Spain  were  watching  our  conduct,  and  wait- 
ing for  the  maturity  of  our  errors.  The  argument  was 
one  not  to  be  employed  lightly ;  but  if  ever  a  statesman 
was  justified  in  referring  to  our  neighbours  across  the 
British  Channel  as  our  natural  enemies  it  was  at  a  period 
when  we  had  been  at  war  with  France  for  thirty  years 
out  of  the  last  eighty-five,  and  were  still  to  be  at  war 
with  her  for  twenty-five  years  out  of  the  next  forty. 
And  if  ever  there  was  a  man  who  might,  without  a  sense 
of  abasement,  refer  to  danger  from  abroad  as  an  addi- 
tional reason  for  dealing  justly  with  our  own  people,  it 
was  the  minister  who  had  fought  France  until  he  had 
landed  her  in  such  a  plight  that  no  one,  unless  our 
government  was  imprudent  to  madness,  could  foresee 
the  time  when  she  would  be  in  a  position  to  fight  us 
again. 

Any  one  who  objected  to  Chatham's  attitude  on  the 
American  question  was  at  liberty  to  term  him  a  poor 
patriot  and  a  bad  citizen ;  and  whatever  reproach  at- 
tached itself  to  his  fame  must  be  shared  by  those  who 
thought  with  him.  Charles  Fox  was  not  easily  abashed, 
even  when  he  was  in  worse  company  than  Chatham's ; 
and  at  no  time  of  his  life  did  he  care  what  names  he 
was  called,  as  long  as  the  course  of  action  which  earned 
them  was  such  that  he  could  defend  in  the  face  of  day. 
He  did  not  shrink  from  defining,  as  explicitly  and  clearly 
as  he  stated  everything,  the  governing  motive  by  which 
his  conduct  during  those  trying  years  was  determined. 
"  I  hope  that  it  will  be  a  point  of  honour  among  us  all 
to  support  the  American  pretensions  in  adversity  as 
much  as  we  did  in  their  prosperity,  and  that  we  shall 
never  desert  those  who  have  acted  unsuccessfully  from 


230  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

Whig  principles,  while  we  continue  to  profess  our  ad- 
miration of  those  who  succeeded  in  the  same  principles 
in  1688."  That  was  how  he  wrote  to  his  familiars  in 
October  1776,  when  the  colonists  were  on  the  edge  of 
destruction,  and  when  the  liberties  of  England  seemed 
worth  but  a  very  few  years'  purchase  in  the  view  of  some 
who  were  neither  fools  nor  cowards.  Among  them  was 
Horace  Walpole,  who  pronounced  himself  unable  to 
conceive  how  a  friend  of  British  freedom  could  view 
with  equanimity  the  subjection  of  America.  Walpole 
little  thought,  (he  said,)  that  he  should  have  lived  to  see 
any  single  Englishman  exulting  over  the  defeat  of  our 
countrymen,  when  they  were  fighting  for  our  liberty  as 
well  as  for  their  own.  Lord  Chatham  was  not  such  an 
Englishman,  nor  Charles  Fox  either.  They  both  of 
them  looked  upon  the  conflict  as  a  civil  war,  in  which 
no  man  was  entitled,  on  any  plea  whatsoever,  to  rank 
himself  against  those  whom  in  his  conscience  he  be- 
lieved to  be  in  the  right. 

But  when  France  stepped  in,  and  our  country  was  in 
danger,  Fox  took  his  place  amongst  the  foremost,  — 
nay,  it  may  be  said,  as  the  foremost,  —  of  Britain's  de- 
fenders ;  for  no  public  man,  out  of  office,  has  ever  before 
or  since  played  so  energetic  and  effective  a  part  in  the 
management  of  a  great  war.  "Attack  France,"  he 
cried,  "for  she  is  your  object.  The  war  against  Amer- 
ica is  against  your  own  countrymen  ;  that  against  France 
is  against  your  inveterate  enemy  and  rival."  In  a  series 
of  speeches,  replete  with  military  instinct,  he  argued  in 
favour  of  assuming  the  offensive  against  the  fresh  as- 
sailants who  came  crowding  in  upon  a  nation  which 
already  had  been  fighting  until  it  had  grown  weary  and 
disheartened.  Aggressive  action,  (so  he  never  ceased 
repeating,)  was  alike  dictated  by  the  necessities  of  the 
situation,  and  by  the  character,  the  spirit,  and  the  tradi- 
tions of  our  people.  He  urged  the  ministry,  with  mar- 
vellous force,  knowledge,  and  pertinacity,  to  rescue  the 
navy  from  the  decay  into  which  they  had  allowed  it  to 
sink.  When  the  French  and  Spanish  fleets  rode  the 


FOX   COMES    TO    THE  FRONT  231 

Channel,  with  a  superiority  in  ships  of  the  line  of  two 
to  one,  his  anxiety  carried  him,  and  kept  him,  as  close 
to  the  scene  of  action  as  the  most  enterprising  of  lands- 
men could  penetrate.  He  haunted  the  country  houses 
and  garrison  towns  of  the  south-western  coast,  and  lived 
much  on  shipboard,  where,  as  any  one  who  knows  sailors 
could  well  believe,  he  was  a  general  favourite.  He 
shared  the  bitter  mortification  which  his  gallant  friend, 
the  future  Lord  St.  Vincent,  felt  when  kept  in  harbour 
at  such  a  moment ;  and  he  went  so  far  as  to  entertain 
a  hope  of  finding  himself,  a  cheery  and  popular  stowa- 
way, in  the  thick  of  what  promised  to  be  the  most  des- 
perate battle  which,  on  her  own  element,  England  would 
ever  have  fought.  He  sympathised  warmly  with  those 
of  his  comrades  and  kinsmen  who,  having  refused  to 
serve  against  America,  were  rejoiced  at  the  prospect  of 
active  employment  when  France  entered  the  field ;  just 
as  a  royalist,  who  would  have  cut  off  his  right  hand 
rather  than  fire  a  pistol  for  the  Parliament  at  Dunbar 
or  Worcester,  might  have  been  proud  to  do  his  share 
among  Cromwell's  soldiers  when  they  were  driving  the 
Spanish  pikemen  across  the  sandhills  at  Dunkirk.  With 
a  steady  grasp,  and  unerring  clearness  of  vision,  Fox 
steered  his  course  through  intricate  and  tempestuous 
waters  ;  and  he  succeeded  in  reconciling,  under  diffi- 
culties as  abstruse  as  ever  beset  a  statesman,  his  fidelity 
to  a  political  creed  with  the  duty  which  he  owed  to  his 
country. 

At  the  commencement  of  1775  Charles  Fox  was  still 
sadly  behindhand  in  respect  to  the  private  virtues  and 
proprieties ;  but,  as  a  statesman,  he  already  was  for- 
midable by  the  virility  of  his  powers  and  the  fixity  of 
his  purpose.  With  his  immediate  object  plain  before 
him,  he  went  forth  to  take  his  place  in  a  world  too  wise 
to  consider  youth  a  drawback.  He  was  of  the  age  at 
which,  ten  years  later  on,  Pitt  superseded  him  in  his 
position  as  the  first  public  man  in  Europe,  and  at  which, 
after  another  ten  years,  Napoleon  in  his  turn  superseded 


232  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

Pitt.  Of  the  disadvantages  which  hampered  others, 
none  existed  for  Fox.  He  was  not,  like  the  Rocking- 
hams,  bound  by  his  antecedents  to  maintain  against 
America  an  abstract  right  of  taxation,  that  could  not  be 
enforced  except  by  the  sword  which  they  thought  it  a 
crime  to  draw.  He  was  not,  like  Chatham,  separated 
from  the  majority  of  the  Opposition  by  mutual  dislike 
and  distrust.  Fox  was  quite  ready  to  pull  with  the 
Whigs,  if  only  they  would  do  their  share  of  work ;  and 
he  already  was  busy  in  the  task  of  keeping  them  up  to 
the  collar.  "  I  am  clear,"  he  wrote  to  Burke,  "  that  a 
secession  is  now  totally  unadvisable,  and  that  nothing 
but  some  very  firm  and  vigorous  step  will  be  at  all 
becoming." 

By  this  time  many  people  were  looking  about  to  see 
where  firmness  and  vigour  could  be  found  ;  for  the  news 
from  America  had  begun  to  arouse  the  classes  which 
worked  the  hardest,  and  paid  the  most,  to  a  perception 
of  the  dangers  towards  which  the  country  was  being 
hurried.  "  The  landed  interest,"  so  Camden  told  Chat- 
ham before  the  middle  of  February,  "  is  almost  alto- 
gether anti-American,  though  the  common  people  hold 
the  war  in  abhorrence,  and  the  merchants  and  trades- 
men for  obvious  reasons  are  likewise  against  it."  Burke 
complained  to  Mr.  Champion,  the  constituent  whom  he 
honoured  with  his  confidence,  that  if  men  with  business 
interests  had  interfered  decisively,  when  in  the  previous 
winter  the  American  question  became  acute,  concilia- 
tory measures  would  most  certainly  have  been  adopted. 
Now,  he  said,  they  were  beginning  to  stir  because  they 
began  to  feel.  It  so  happens  that  the  exact  date  is 
known  when  the  true  state  of  matters  was  first  borne 
in  upon  the  public  mind.  A  letter  from  London  to  a 
gentleman  in  New  York,  dated  the  sixth  of  December, 
1774,  runs  as  follows:  "This  day  there  was  a  report 
current  that  the  Congress  of  the  States  of  America  had 
adjourned,  having  fixed  on  stopping  all  imports  into 
America  from  Great  Britain  the  first  of  this  month. 
From  curiosity  I  strolled  upon  'Change,  and  for  the 


FOX  COMES   TO    THE  FRONT  233 

first  time  saw  concern  and  deep  distress  in  the  face  of 
every  American  merchant.  This  convinced  me  of  the 
truth  of  what  I  may  have  said  before,  that  the  mer- 
chants will  never  stir  till  they  feel;  and  every  one 
knows  that  the  manufacturers  will  never  take  the  lead 
of  the  merchants."1 

The  public  despatches  were  alarming  enough  to  those 
who  reflected  that  Governors  and  Lieutenant-Governors 
would  naturally  have  put  the  best  face  possible  on  a 
situation  which  they  themselves  had  done  much  to 
create.  But  those  despatches  did  not  tell  the  worst. 
Men  could  still  write  freely  to  each  other  across  the 
Atlantic ;  and  the  advices  received  by  city  merchants  and 
bankers  were  of  a  complexion  to  fill  everybody,  except 
speculators  for  a  fall,  with  a  feeling  nothing  short  of  blank 
dismay.  No  official  papers  from  Maryland  had  been 
printed,  and  it  might  have  been  supposed  that  no  news 
was  good  news  as  far  as  that  colony  was  concerned ; 
but  before  December  ended  it  came  to  be  known  that 
a  principal  seaport  of  Maryland  had  placed  itself  in  line 
with  Boston.  When  the  brig  Peggy  Stewart  of  Lon- 
don, having  on  board  two  thousand  pounds  "of  that 
detestable  weed  tea,"  arrived  at  Annapolis,  Messrs.  Will- 
iam and  Stewart,  to  whom  the  cargo  was  consigned, 
put  their  hands  to  a  paper  acknowledging  that  they  had 
committed  an  act  of  most  pernicious  tendency  to  the 
liberties  of  America.  The  same  gentlemen  then  went 
on  board  the  said  vessel,  with  her  sails  set  and  colours 
flying,  and  voluntarily  set  fire  to  the  tea.  In  a  few 
hours  the  whole  freight,  and  the  ship  with  it,  had  been 
consumed  by  the  flames  in  the  presence  of  a  great  mul- 

1  The  style  of  the  letter  to  New  York,  with  the  curious  similarity  in  cer- 
tain expressions  to  those  employed  in  the  letter  to  Champion,  renders  it 
more  than  possible  that  it  was  written  by  Burke,  who,  three  years  before, 
had  been  appointed  agent  to  the  Assembly  of  New  York  with  a  salary  of 
5<x>/.  a  year.  It  is  true  that  he  despatched  a  long  and  very  famous  epistle 
from  his  home  in  Buckinghamshire  on  the  fifth  of  December ;  but  he  was 
speaking  in  the  House  of  Commons  that  evening,  and  again  on  the  sixth ; 
and  he  might  well  have  gone  on  'Change  on  the  morning  of  the  second  of 
those  two  days  before  writing  the  letter  to  the  gentleman  in  New  York. 


234  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

titude  of  spectators.  When  the  letter  notifying  this 
transaction  to  the  London  correspondents  of  the  unfort- 
unate firm  was  passing  up  and  down  Threadneedle 
Street,  many  a  warm  city  man  must  have  felt  a  shiver 
go  through  him.  In  the  same  month  a  Whig  noble- 
man received  an  account  of  the  warlike  preparations  in 
America,  written  at  Philadelphia  by  General  Lee,  whose 
reputation  in  fashionable  military  circles  lent  weight  to 
language  which,  like  himself,  was  less  soldierly  than 
soldatesque.  "What  devil  of  a  nonsense  can  instigate 
any  man  of  General  Gage's  understanding  to  concur  in 
bringing  about  this  delusion  ?  I  have  lately,  my  Lord, 
run  through  almost  the  whole  colonies  from  the  North 
to  the  South.  I  should  not  be  guilty  of  an  exaggeration 
in  asserting  that  there  are  200,000  strong-bodied  active 
yeomanry,  ready  to  encounter  all  hazards.  They  are 
not  like  the  yeomanry  of  other  countries,  unarmed  and 
unused  to  arms.  They  want  nothing  but  some  arrange- 
ment, and  this  they  are  now  bent  on  establishing.  Even 
this  Quaker  province  is  following  the  example.  I  was 
present  at  a  review  at  Providence  in  Rhode  Island,  and 
really  never  saw  anything  more  perfect.  Unless  the 
banditti  at  Westminster  speedily  undo  everything  they 
have  done,  their  royal  paymaster  will  hear  of  reviews 
and  manoeuvres  not  quite  so  entertaining  as  those  he  is 
presented  with  in  Hyde  Park  and  Wimbledon  Common." 
The  time  was  too  surely  approaching  when  communi- 
cations addressed  from  America  to  gentlemen  and 
noblemen  in  London  would  never  get  further  than  the 
secret  room  in  the  Post  Office ;  and  colonists  who  wished 
for  peace  hastened,  while  the  avenues  were  open,  to  en- 
lighten and  admonish  those  English  public  men  whom 
they  could  hope  to  influence.  At  the  end  of  1774  a 
member  of  the  British  Parliament  was  informed  in  two 
letters  from  Pennsylvania  that  there  were  gunsmiths 
enough  in  the  Province  to  make  one  hundred  thousand 
stand  of  arms  in  one  year,  at  twenty-eight  shillings 
sterling  apiece ;  that  the  four  New  England  colonies, 
together  with  Virginia  and  Maryland,  were  completely 


FOX  COMES    TO    THE  FRONT  235 

armed  and  disciplined ;  and  that  nothing  but  a  total 
repeal  of  the  Penal  Acts  could  prevent  a  civil  war  in 
America.  The  writer  dealt  as  freely  with  large  figures 
as  General  Lee ;  but  he  understood  his  countrymen  bet- 
ter in  a  case  where  the  merits  of  that  officer  were  con- 
cerned; for  the  letters  went  on  to  explain  that  the 
colonies  were  not  so  wrapped  up  in  the  General's  military 
accomplishments  as  to  give  him,  when  it  came  to  choos- 
ing the  Commander-in-Chief,  a  preference  over  Colonel 
Putnam  and  Colonel  Washington,  who  had  won  the 
trust  and  admiration  of  the  continent  by  their  talents 
and  achievements.  "  There  are  several  hundred  thou- 
sand Americans  who  would  face  any  danger  with  these 
illustrious  heroes  to  lead  them.  It  is  to  no  purpose  to 
attempt  to  destroy  the  opposition  to  the  omnipotence  of 
Parliament  by  taking  off  our  .Hancocks,  Adamses,  and 
Dickinsons.  Ten  thousand  patriots  of  the  same  stamp 
stand  ready  to  fill  up  their  places."  Dickinson  himself, 
writing  not  to  England,  but  about  England,  summed  up 
the  view  of  the  best  and  wisest  men  on  his  side  of  the 
controversy.  "I  cannot  but  pity,"  he  said,  "a  brave 
and  generous  nation  thus  plunged  in  misfortune  by  a  few 
worthless  persons.  Everything  may  be  attributed  to 
the  misrepresentations  and  mistakes  of  Ministers ;  and 
universal  peace  can  be  established  throughout  the  British 
world  only  by  the  acknowledgment  of  the  truth  that 
half  a  dozen  men  are  fools  or  knaves.  If  their  character 
for  ability  and  integrity  is  to  be  maintained  by  wrecking 
the  whole  empire,  Monsieur  Voltaire  may  write  an 
addition  to  the  chapter  on  the  subject  of  '  Little  things 
producing  great  events. '  "  1 

From  this  time  forwards  there  was  a  growing  disposi- 
tion in  the  House  of  Commons  to  take  America  seri- 
ously ;  and  there  was  a  man  in  it  determined  never  again 
to  let  the  question  sleep.  On  the  second  of  February, 
1775,  the  Prime  Minister  moved  an  Address  to  the  King, 
praying  his  Majesty  to  adopt  effectual  measures  for 

1  The  extracts  given  in  this  and  the  preceding  paragraphs  are  all  from 
the  American  Archives. 


236  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

suppressing  rebellion  in  the  colonies.  Later  in  the 
evening  a  member  rose,  who,  in  the  style  of  solemn  cir- 
cumlocution by  which  the  chroniclers  of  proceedings  in 
Parliament  appeared  to  think  that  they  kept  themselves 
right  with  the  law,  was  described  as  "  a  gentleman  who 
had  not  long  before  sat  at  the  Treasury  Board,  from 
whence  he  had  been  removed  for  a  spirit  not  sufficiently 
submissive,  and  whose  abilities  were  as  unquestioned  as 
the  spirit  for  which  he  suffered."  l  Fox,  (for  Fox  of 
course  it  was,)  proposed  an  amendment  deploring  that 
the  papers  laid  upon  the  table  had  served  only  to  con- 
vince the  House  that  the  measures  taken  by  his 
Majesty's  servants  tended  "rather  to  widen,  than  to 
heal,  the  unhappy  differences  between  Great  Britain 
and  America."  That  was  the  turning  point  of  his  own 
career,  and  the  starting  point  for  many  others  in  a 
hearty,  fearless,  and  sustained  opposition  to  the  policy 
of  the  Government.  The  effect  of  his  oratory  is  estab- 
lished by  various  competent  authorities  ;  from  the  official 
reporter,  who  broke  off  to  remark  that  Mr.  Charles  Fox 
spoke  better  than  usual,2  to  Walpole,  who  records  in  his 
journals  that  the  young  statesman  entered  into  the  whole 
history  and  argument  of  the  dispute  with  force  and 
temper,  and  made  the  finest  figure  he  had  done  yet. 

But  the  most  lively  and  convincing  testimony  is  found 
in  a  letter  written  by  a  great  man  who  on  this  occasion 
learned,  finally  and  resignedly,  how  hard  it  is  even  to 
begin  making  a  great  speech.  Gibbon  had  been  getting 
ready  for  the  debate  during  the  whole  of  the  Christmas 
holidays  :  studying  the  parliamentary  papers  as  minutely 
as  if  they  had  been  the  lost  books  of  Dion  Cassius  ; 
talking  for  four  hours  on  end  with  one  of  the  agents 
from  Massachusetts ;  and  "  sucking  Governor  Hutchin- 
son  very  dry,"  with  as  much  probability  of  arriving  at  a 
just  conclusion  as  a  Roman  Senator  who  took  his  idea 
of  the  Sicilian  character  from  a  private  conversation  with 
Verres.  But,  when  the  hour  came,  he  felt  that  he  him- 

1  The  Annual  Register  for  1775;  chapter  v. 

2  The  Parliamentary  History  of  England,  vol.  xviii.,  p.  227. 


FOX,  COMES    TO    THE  FRONT  237 

self  was  not  the  man  for  it.  Throughout  the  Amend- 
ment on  the  Address,  and  the  Report  of  the  Address,  he 
sate  safe  but  inglorious,  listening  to  the  thunder  which 
rolled  around  him.  The  principal  antagonists  on  both 
days,  he  said,  were  Fox  and  Wedderburn ;  of  whom  the 
elder  displayed  his  usual  talents,  while  the  younger, 
embracing  the  whole  vast  compass  of  the  question 
before  the  House,  discovered  powers  for  regular  debate 
which  neither  his  friends  hoped,  nor  his  enemies  dreaded. 
On  the  first  day,  when  Fox  discoursed  for  an  hour  and 
twenty  minutes,  his  contribution  to  the  discussion  is  rep- 
resented in  the  Parliamentary  History  by  an  abstract  of 
five  lines,  and  on  the  second  day  his  name  is  not  even 
mentioned ;  while  Wilkes  obtained  six  columns,  and 
Governor  Johnston  nine.  It  is  evident,  and  indeed  was 
sometimes  as  good  as  confessed  in  a  foot-note,  that,  in 
those  early  and  artless  days  of  reporting,  a  speaker  got 
back  in  print  what  he  gave  in  manuscript.  Fox  would 
as  soon  have  thought  of  writing  down  what  he  was 
going  to  say  as  of  meeting  a  bill  before  it  fell  due ;  and 
the  rapid  growth  of  his  fame  may  be  estimated  by  a 
comparison  between  the  reports  of  1775,  and  those  of 
1 779  and  1780.  Before  the  Parliament  was  dissolved,  his 
more  important  speeches  were  reproduced  without  the 
omission  of  a  topic,  and,  (so  far  as  the  existing  re- 
sources of  stenography  admitted,)  without  the  abbrevia- 
tion of  a  sentence. 

Fox  took  the  sense  of  the  House  on  his  Amendment, 
and  had  reason  to  be  satisfied  with  the  result.  He  had 
been  long  enough  a  member  of  Parliament  to  have 
learned  that,  in  politics,  all's  well  that  ends  pretty  well. 
The  minority  mustered  over  a  hundred ;  a  number  ex- 
ceeding by  forty  the  best  division  which,  in  the  former 
Parliament,  was  obtained  against  the  worst  of  the  Amer- 
ican measures.  It  would  have  been  reckoned  a  most 
weighty  protest  on  any  occasion  when  any  House  of 
Commons  has  been  invited  to  take  steps  which  responsi- 
ble ministers  affirm  to  be  necessary  for  vindicating  the 
honour,  and  securing  the  predominance,  of  the  country ; 


238  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

but  it  was  doubly  significant  in  that  age  of  intimidation 
and  bribery.  All  who  voted  on  the  one  side  were  per- 
fectly well  aware  that,  in  so  doing,  they  cut  themselves 
off  from  the  hope  of  their  sovereign's  favour,  or  even 
of  his  forgiveness.  And  meanwhile  a  full  half  of  those 
who  voted  on  the  other  side  were  drawing  public  salary, 
without  rendering  any  public  service  except  that  of  doing 
as  they  were  bid ;  or  were  fingering  money  which  had 
passed  into  their  pockets  from  the  Exchequer  by  methods 
that  in  our  day  would  have  been  ruinous  both  to  him  who 
received,  and  to  him  who  bestowed.  The  King  pro- 
nounced the  majority  "  very  respectable  ";  as  to  him,  in 
both  senses  of  the  word,  it  no  doubt  seemed.  So  pleased 
was  he  that  he  kindly  condoled  with  his  Minister  on  hav- 
ing been  kept  out  of  bed,  (which  in  the  case  of  Lord  North 
was  a  very  different  thing  from  being  kept  awake,)  till 
so  late  an  hour  as  three  o'clock  in  the  morning. 

That  minister,  however,  was  less  easily  satisfied.  He 
now  knew  himself  to  be  face  to  face  with  a  very  differ- 
ent opposition  from  anything  which  in  the  existing 
Parliament  he  had  hitherto  encountered ;  and  he  recog- 
nised the  quarter  from  which  vitality  had  been  infused 
into  the  counsels  and  procedures  of  his  adversaries. 
Before  a  fortnight  had  elapsed  he  came  down  to  the 
House  with  a  Resolution  promising,  in  the  name  of  the 
Commons,  that  any  American  colony,  in  which  the  As- 
sembly consented  to  vote  money  for  certain  stated  pub- 
lic purposes,  should  be  exempted  from  the  liability  to 
be  taxed  by  the  British  Parliament.  Every  man,  in  that 
Parliament  and  outside  it,  saw  that  the  plan  was  spe- 
cially and  carefully  framed  to  meet  the  argument  on 
which,  in  his  recent  speeches,  Charles  Fox  had  founded 
the  case  that  he  had  so  brilliantly  advocated.  Governor 
Pownall,  who  immediately  followed  North,  stated,  in 
well-chosen  words  which  no  one  ventured  to  contradict, 
that  the  Resolution  was  a  peace  offering  to  the  young 
ex-minister.1  Such  a  recognition  would  have  been  a 

1  "An  honourable  gentleman,  in  a  late  debate,  certainly  was  the  first, 
and  the  only  one,  to  hit  upon  the  real  jet  of  the  dispute  between  this  coun- 


FOX   COMES    TO    THE  FRONT  239 

high  compliment  from  any  man  in  office  to  any  private 
member ;  but  when  paid  by  a  First  Lord  of  the  Treasury 
to  a  former  subordinate,  who  had  left  his  Board  within 
the  twelvemonth,  and  had  been  attacking  him  ever  since, 
it  was  a  piece  of  practical  adulation  which  put  to  a 
searching  and  unexpected  proof  both  the  strength  of  con- 
viction, and  the  presence  of  mind,  of  him  to  whom  it  was 
addressed. 

On  neither  of  the  two  points  was  Fox  unequal  to 
the  test.  While  Pownall  was  speaking,  he  had  time  to 
decide  on  his  line  of  action,  the  importance  of  which  he 
at  once  discerned.  It  was  his  first  chance  of  showing 
that  he  possessed  the  qualities  of  a  true  parliamentary 
leader,  who  could  make  the  most  of  a  tactical  situation 
without  surrendering,  in  the  smallest  particular,  his  loy- 
alty to  a  great  cause.  He  commenced  his  remarks  by 
congratulating  the  public  on  the  change  in  the  Prime 
Minister's  attitude.  The  noble  Lord,  who  had  been 
all  for  violence  and  war,  was  treading  back  in  his  own 
footprints  towards  peace.  Now  was  seen  the  effect 
which  a  firm  and  spirited  opposition  'never  failed  to 
produce.  The  noble  Lord  had  lent  his  ear  to  reason ; 
and,  if  the  minority  in  that  House  persevered  in  sup- 
porting the  rights  and  liberties  of  the  colonies,  the 
process  of  his  conversion  would  go  on  apace.  He  had 
spoken  of  the  Americans  with  propriety  and  discrimina- 
tion. He  had  refused  to  allow  that  they  were  rebels ; 
and  even  to  Massachusetts  he  would  gladly  open  a  door 
through  which  she  might  return  to  her. allegiance.  He 
had  distinctly  stated  that  Great  Britain,  dealing  as  one 
nation  according  to  diplomatic  usage  deals  with  another, 
had  at  the  outset  demanded  more  than  in  the  end 
she  would  insist  on  exacting ;  and,  once  that  principle 

try  and  America.  He  very  ably  stated  that  the  reason  why  the  colonies 
objected  to  the  levying  taxes,  for  the  purposes  of  a  revenue  in  America, 
was  that  such  revenue  took  out  of  the  hands  of  the  people  that  control 
which  every  Englishman  thinks  he  ought  to  have  over  that  government  to 
which  his  rights  and  interests  are  entrusted.  The  mode  of  appropriation 
specified  in  this  Resolution  takes  away  the  ground  of  that  opposition."  — 
The  Parliamentary  History  of  England ;  Feb.  20,  1775. 


240  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

admitted,  the  noble  Lord  would  be  as  much  inclined  on 
a  future  day  to  recede  from  what  he  proposed  now,  as 
now  he  was  ready  to  give  up  that  which  he  had  before 
so  strenuously  defended.  But  for  the  present  the  noble 
Lord  had  not  gone  far  enough.  He  aimed  at  standing 
well  with  the  two  sets  of  people  whose  views  were  irre- 
concileable :  —  the  colonists  who  were  resolved,  under 
no  conditions,  to  admit  the  right  of  Parliament  to  tax 
them ;  and  the  supporters  of  the  Government  who  were 
equally  determined,  in  every  contingency,  to  assert  that 
right  and  exercise  it.  The  noble  Lord  had  wished 
to  content  both  parties,  and  he  had  contented  neither. 
On  the  countenances  of  gentlemen  opposite,  so  far  as 
he  was  able  to  read  them,  the  orator  could  descry  no 
symptoms  of  satisfaction ;  and  the  Americans,  it  was 
only  too  certain,  must  and  would  reject  the  offer  with 
disdain. 

The  speech  was  marked  by  the  highest  art,  —  that 
of  saying  precisely  what  the  speaker  thought,  in  the 
plainest  language,  and  without  a  syllable  over.  A 
scene  ensued  when  he  resumed  his  place  which  was 
long  remembered  within  the  House  of  Commons,  and 
has  occupied  a  space  in  English  and  American  histories 
out  of  all  proportion  to  its  intrinsic  consequence,  except 
so  far  as  it  discredited  the  Prime  Minister,  and  estab- 
lished the  position  and  authority  of  Fox.  It  was  one 
of  those  rare  moments  when  a  great  party,  in  a  tumult 
of  indignant  surprise,  shakes  off  the  control  of  those 
to  whom  it  is  accustomed  to  look  for  guidance ;  when 
the  Ministers  sit  on  thorns,  or  jump  up,  each  in  his 
turn  only  to  confound  confusion,  and  attract  on  to 
his  own  head  a  share  of  the  impertinences  with  which 
the  air  is  swarming ;  and  when  an  opposition  feels  itself 
repaid  in  the  wild  joy  of  a  single  hour  for  long  years 
of  disappointment  and  abstinence.  North,  like  much 
greater  men  before  and  after  him,  experienced  the  in- 
convenience of  having  sprung  a  policy  on  his  followers, 
and  on  not  a  few  of  his  colleagues.  The  mutiny  began 
at  headquarters.  Welbore  Ellis,  a  placeman  who  had 


FOX  COMES    TO    THE  FRONT 


241 


already  turned  his  hundredth  quarter-day,  querulously 
announced  that,  as  a  man  of  honour,  he  felt  bound  to 
oppose  the  Minister;  and  though  North  could  hardly 
be  called  a  sick  lion,  the  House  hailed  with  glee  an 
occurrence  which  bore  a  strong  resemblance  to  a  very 
familiar  fable.  Rigby  was  seen  taking  notes,  and  could 
with  difficulty  be  "persuaded  to  put  them  back  into  his 
pocket ;  but  he  did  not  fail  to  make  his  views  known 
to  that  part  of  the  audience  which  was  the  least  likely 
to  be  gratified  by  them.  An  aside  from  him  was  more 
formidable  than  an  oration  from  Welbore  Ellis  ;  and 
every  Right  Honourable  Gentleman  within  earshot  on 
the  Treasury  bench  was  obliged  to  hear  how,  in  Rigby's 
opinion,  the  proper  persons  to  move  and  second  Lord 
North's  Resolution  were  Mr.  Otis  and  Mr.  Hancock,  of 
whom  the  one  had  been  the  ringleader  in  the  agitation 
against  the  Stamp  Act,  and  the  other  had  superintended 
the  destruction  of  the  tea.  The  most  violent  in  the  fray 
was  Captain  Acland,  a  cousin  by  marriage  of  Charles 
Fox.  "He"  was  a  young  man  of  fierce  manners  and 
dauntless  courage,  who  now  was  always  to  the  front 
when  sharp  words  were  being  exchanged;  especially 
where  there  was  a  prospect  that  on  the  next  morning 
recourse  would  be  had  to  yet  more  pointed  weapons. 
Acland  assailed  the  Government  in  a  style  which  aroused 
the  wonder  even  of  Chatham ;  whose  standard  of  the 
lengths  to  which  a  young  military  man  might  go,  when 
denouncing  his  elders  in  the  House  of  Commons,  had, 
in  the  days  when  he  himself  was  a  cornet  of  horse,  been 
notably  a  generous  one.1 

The  real  danger  to  the  Ministry  lay  in  the  sulkiness 
of  the  King's  Friends.  These  gentlemen,  by  an  unac- 
countable blunder,  had  been  left  without  their  orders. 
Having  to  decide  for  themselves  as  to  what  their  em- 

1  "  Lord  North  was,  in  the  beginning  of  the  day,  like  a  man  exploded, 
and  the  judgment  of  the  House,  during  about  two  hours,  was  that  his 
Lordship  was  going  to  be  in  a  considerable  minority  ;  Mr.  Ellis  and  others, 
young  Acland  in  particular,  having  declared  highly  and  roughly  against 
his  desertion  of  the  cause  of  cruelty."  —  Chatham  to  his  wife  ;  Feb.  21,1 775. 
VOL.  i.  R 


242  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

ployer  expected  of  them,  they  naturally  enough  con- 
cluded that,  as  in  the  parallel  case  of  Rockingham  and 
the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act,  their  duty  to  the  King 
required  them  to  stab  his  Minister  in  the  back.  North 
had  been  up  five  or  six  times,  and  matters  were  looking 
very  black  for  the  Government,  when,  before  it  was  too 
late,  a  deft  and  able  ally  came  to  the  rescue.  Sir  Gil- 
bert Elliot  was  a  politician  of  account  in  his  own 'gener- 
ation, and  had  ere  this  been  honoured  by  a  message 
from  the  King  to  the  effect  that  he  did  not  take  so  for- 
ward a  part  in  the  House  of  Commons  as  his  abilities 
warranted.  But  he  needed  no  one  to  tell  him  how  to 
make  the  most  of  his  remarkable  qualities ;  and  he  re- 
served himself  for  emergencies  when  a  King's  Friend, 
who  could  speak  as  well  as  vote,  was  of  more  value  than 
dozens  or  scores  of  silent  courtiers. 

Gilbert  Elliot's  political  fortunes  had  gained  much, 
but~his  posthumous  celebrity  has  suffered  not  a  little, 
from  the  unique  distinction  of  his  family ;  for  he  was 
the  midmost  of  five  eminent  men,  with  the  same  Chris- 
tian name  and  surname,  who  succeeded  each  other  as 
father  and  son.  The  world,  glad  to  have  anything  by 
which  to  identify  him,  has  remembered  him  as  the 
writer  of  a  pastoral  song,  admired  by  Sir  Walter  Scott. 
It  began  with  the  line,  perhaps  better  known  than  the 
rest  of  the  poem, 

"  My  sheep  I  neglected,  I  broke  my  sheep-hook." 

The  author  of  the  ditty  now  proved  that  he  was  skilled 
in  the  use  of  that  rustic  implement.  Elliot  bluntly 
warned  the  official  flock  that  it  was  high  time  to  leave 
off  butting  at  each  other,  and  scampering  at  large  over 
the  country.  He  contrived  to  convey  something  into 
his  manner  which  suggested  to  the  King's  Friends  that 
they  were  on  the  wrong  scent ;  as  indeed  was  the  case, 
since  the  whole  business  had  been  arranged  beforehand 
between  the  Sovereign  and  the  Minister.  The  storm 
abated ;  and  Fox,  who  saw  that  there  had  been  suffi- 
cient of  it  for  his  purposes,  moved  that  the  Chairman 


THE  AMERICAN  FISHERIES  243 

should  leave  the  Chair.  A  division  took  place,  and 
there  was  some  cross-voting;  for  on  both  sides  there 
were,  as  usual,  certain  of  those  ingenious  senators  who 
please  themselves  with  thinking  that  they  indicate  their 
opinion  on  the  main  issue  by  the  course  they  take  on  a 
technical  point  which  is  understood  by  no  one  outside 
Parliament,  and  by  fewer  within  it  than  is  generally 
believed.  And  so  the  business  ended,  with  a  twofold 
result.  Fox,  in  his  character  of  a  champion  of  liberty, 
had  shown  himself  not  less  prompt  a  warrior,  and  a 
much  more  judicious  strategist,  than  in  the  days  when 
he  figured  as  Lord  of  Misrule  in  all  the  sham  tourna- 
ments of  the  House  of  Commons.  And  North  had  been 
effectually  frightened,  for  some  long  time  to  come,  out 
of  any  inclination  to  try  his  hand  at  the  conciliation  of 
America. 

The  Prime  Minister  had  no  desire  for  a  repetition  of 
the  lesson  which  that  twentieth  of  February  had  taught 
him.  He  saw  very  plainly  what  his  place  would  have 
been  worth  at  noon  on  the  twenty-first  if  the  King's 
Friends  had  been  correct  in  thinking  that  they  had  the 
King  behind  them.  So  long  as  North  held  his  present 
employment  there  was  no  demand  for  the  services  of 
his  better  self ;  and  he  returned  once  more  to  plod  the 
weary  round  of  coercive  legislation.  The  main  occupa- 
tion of  Parliament  during  that  session  was  a  bill  for  ex- 
cluding the  New  England  colonies  from  the  principal 
fishing  grounds  within  their  reach,  and  notably  from 
the  banks  of  Newfoundland.  It  was  out  of  the  cod  fish- 
ery that  the  prosperity  of  those  colonies  had  originally 
sprung;  and  by  the  same  industry  it  was  still  largely 
maintained.  A  sea  captain  in  the  early  years  of  the 
seventeenth  century  calculated  that  the  charge  of  equip- 
ping a  ship  of  a  hundred  tons,  with  eight  boats  of  the 
sort  now  called  "  dories "  on  board,  was  four  hundred 
pounds.  "  Eight  boats  with  22  men  in  a  Summer  doe 
usually  kill  25,000  fish  for  every  Boat.  Sometimes 
they  have  taken  above  35,000  for  a  Boat,  so  that  they 


244  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

load  not  onely  their  owne  Ship,  but  other  spare  ships 
which  come  thither  onely  to  buy  the  overplus."  This 
captain  went  on  to  explain  that  the  cargo,  if  taken  in 
the  right  season  to  the  right  market,  (which  was  not 
"  Touloune  or  Merselus,"  but  England,)  would  sell  for 
2,2507.  "At  New  Plimoth,  in  Aprill,"  the  writer  pro- 
ceeded, "  there  is  a  fish  much  like  a  herring  that  comes 
up  into  the  small  brookes  to  spawne.  After  those  the 
Cod  also  presseth  in  such  plenty,  even  into  the  very  har- 
bours, that  they  have  caught  some  in  their  arms,  and 
hooke  them  so  fast  that  three  men  oft  loadeth  a  Boat 
of  two  tuns  in  two  houres."  1 

James  the  First  had  conferred  upon  the  settlers  in 
New  England  the  exclusive  privilege  of  fishing  in  North 
American  waters.  That  concession  was  justly  resented 
by  the  English  Parliament ;  but  the  colonists  forbore 
from  enforcing  their  uttermost  rights,  and  indeed  had 
no  occasion  for  them.  They  lived  and  throve  by  fishing 
not  because  they  were  monopolists,  but  because  they 
were  on  the  spot ;  because  the  best  boat-builders  in  the 
world,  and  very  far  from  the  worst  ship-builders,  had 
their  yards  at  Boston  ;  and  because,  above  all,  they 
belonged  to  the  right  race  for  the  work.  And  now, 
when  it  was  proposed  for  political  objects  to  drive 
them  from  the  pursuit  of  their  calling,  the  uneasiness 
which  had  begun  to  pervade  the  commercial  world 
deepened  into  consternation.  It  was  vain  for  the 
Ministry  to  hold  forth  the  bait  of  the  spoils  of  New 
England,  and  to  evoke  patriotic  cupidity  by  the  pros- 
pect of  the  three  hundred  thousand  pounds,  or  the  five 
hundred  thousand  pounds,  which  would  be  transferred 
yearly  from  the  ship-owners  of  Salem  and  Providence 
to  the  ship-owners  of  Poole  and  Dartmouth.  The 
trained  leaders  of  commerce,  who  knew  the  open 
secrets  of  solid  and  profitable  business,  did  not  look 
for  information  from  hack-writers  whose  statistics  and 

1  The  account  may  be  found  in  "  The  Gener all  Historic  of  Virginia,  Neva 
England,  and  the  Summer  Isles,  by  Captaine  John  Smith,  London,  1624"; 
under  the  head  of  "  Master  Dee,  his  opinion  for  the  building  of  Ships." 


THE  AMERICAN  FISHERIES  245 

arguments  were  dictated  to  them  in  Downing  Street. 
The  whole  life  of  every  English  merchant  and  banker, 
and  of  his  father  and  grandfather  before  him,  had  been 
one  continuous  course  of  instruction  in  the  present  and 
progressing  value  of  the  trade  with  America.  The  ex- 
ports to  Pennsylvania  alone  had  increased  fifty-fold  in 
less  than  three-quarters  of  a  century.  New  England 
was  a  large  and  regular  customer,  with  an  enormous 
current  debt  owing  to  British  exporters  and  manu- 
facturers. That  custom  would  be  a  thing  of  the  past, 
and  those  debts  could  never  be  recovered,  if,  with  the 
loss  of  her  fishing,  she  lost  the  means  of  providing  her- 
self with  imported  goods,  and  paying  for  those  which 
she  had  received  already.  Nor  was  it  only  a  question 
of  New  England.  The  colonies,  one  and  all,  were  on 
honour  to  stand  and  fall  together ;  and,  when  the  cruel 
and  insulting  measure  now  before  Parliament  was  once 
in  the  Statute-book,  all  hope  that  Congress  would  drop 
the  non-importation  agreement  would  have  to  be  defi- 
nitely abandoned. 

This  time  there  was  little  hesitation  in  the  action  of 
the  mercantile  classes  throughout  the  English-speaking 
world  ;  and  there  could  be  no  mistake  as  to  their  views, 
which  found  a  voice  in  petitions,  in  deputations,  and  in 
evidence  proffered  at  the  bar  of  the  Lords.  The  planters 
of  the  Sugar  Islands,  resident  in  London,  entreated  the 
House  of  Commons  to  stay  its  hand.  As  time  went  on, 
and  the  news  of  what  was  purposed  reached  the  tropics, 
the  Assembly  of  Jamaica,  in  the  hurry  of  a  well- 
grounded  panic,  drew  up  and  despatched  a  petition 
explaining  how  in  their  case,  with  a  vast  slave  popula- 
tion around  and  among  them,  the  very  existence  of 
society  would  be  endangered  by  the  cessation  of  their 
traffic  with  the  American  colonies.  The  Society  of 
Friends  represented  to  Parliament  the  case  of  Nan- 
tucket,  an  island  which  lay  off  the  coast  of  Massachu- 
setts. The  population  subsisted  on  the  whale  fishery, 
and  owned  a  fleet  of  one  hundred  and  forty  sail.  The 
agricultural  produce  of  Nantucket  would  hardly  support 


246  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

twenty  families ;  but  the  island  contained  more  than 
five  thousand  inhabitants.  Nine  out  of  ten  among  them 
were  Quakers,  of  whom  none  were  disaffected  politi- 
cians, and  all  drank  tea  to  a  man.  That  was  a  sample 
of  the  extent  to  which  the  bill  would  involve  opponents, 
well-wishers,  and  neutrals  in  one  common  destruction. 
The  sentiments  of  the  higher  commerce,  in  its  central 
haunt,  found  expression  in  an  address  laid  by  the  Lord 
Mayor,  the  Aldermen,  and  the  Liverymen  at  the  foot  of 
the  Throne.  The  occupant  of  that  august  seat  received 
their  remonstrance  in  public  with  marked  coldness,  and 
characterised  it  in  private  as  a  new  dish  of  insolence 
from  the  shop  which  had  fabricated  so  many.  It  was  a 
shop  the  proprietors  of  which  could  not  fairly  be  charged 
with  interfering  in  matters  outside  their  own  province ; 
for  the  debts  due  from  New  England  amounted  to  eight 
hundred  thousand  pounds  in  the  City  of  London  alone. 
The  bill  for  restraining  the  trade  and  commerce  of 
the  New  England  colonies  afforded  Parliament  one 
more  opening  to  arrange  by  policy  those  difficulties 
which  were  rapidly  tending  towards  a  solution  by  the 
arbitrament  of  war.  That  last  opportunity  was  soon  a 
lost  one ;  but  the  spokesmen  of  the  minority  comported 
themselves  in  a  manner  worthy  of  the  supreme  occa- 
sion, and  of  the  great  assembly  to  which  they  belonged. 
It  was  a  question  precisely  suited  to  the  genius  of 
Burke.  The  final  series  of  appeals  in  which  he  ex- 
horted the  House  of  Commons  to  settle  the  American 
controversy  by  light  and  right,  before  it  came  to  a  con- 
test of  might,  showed  more  than  his  usual  power  of 
mastering  the  details  of  trade  and  finance,  and  con- 
verting them  into  oratory  for  the  instruction  of  "his 
audience,  and  into  literature  for  the  admiration  of 
posterity.  As  member  for  Bristol  he  was  bound  to  do 
his  utmost  in  the  interests  of  commerce  ;  and  his  con- 
stituents, the  best  of  whom  were  not  undeserving  of 
such  a  representative,  had  supplied  him  with  fresh 
stores  of  facts  and  calculations  in  addition  to  those 
which  he  possessed  already.  His  speaking  had  never 


THE  AMERICAN  FISHERIES  247 

been  more  rich  in  the  fruit,  and  more  sparing  in  the 
flowers ;  and  he  had  his  reward  in  the  close  and  respect- 
ful attention  of  hearers  uneasily  conscious  that  the  fate 
of  the  empire  was  slipping  out  of  their  grasp,  and  that 
an  impulse  had  been  given  to  it  which  might  carry  it 
far  in  the  wrong  direction. 

Burke's  exertions  were  supported  and  supplemented 
by  Fox  with  an  abundance,  but  no  superfluity,  of  that 
straightforward  and  unlaboured  declamation  which, 
from  his  earliest  to  his  latest  speech,  always  commanded 
the  ear,  and  never  offended  the  taste,  of  the  House  of 
Commons.  With  headlong,  but  sure-handed,  energy  of 
delineation  he  sketched  out  the  broad  lines  of  states- 
manship, and  filled  them  in  with  the  special  circum- 
stances of  the  situation.  His  warning  against  the  folly 
of  presenting  all  Americans,  whatever  might  be  their 
political  sympathies,  with  the  alternative  of  starvation 
or  rebellion,  impressed  his  listeners  by  its  force  and 
directness,  and  received  striking  confirmation  at  the 
critical  moments  of  the  war.  On  three  several  occasions 
the  fate  of  a  campaign  was  largely  influenced  by  those 
very  fishermen  who  had  been  driven  wholesale  from 
their  employment  into  the  ranks  of  Washington's  army. 
The  enthusiasm,  the  intrepidity,  and  the  professional 
skill  of  the  mariners,  who  served  as  soldiers  in  the  New 
England  regiments,  enabled  their  general  to  deprive  the 
British  garrison  of  the  supplies  which  abounded  on  the 
islands  in  Boston  harbour ;  to  accomplish  the  retirement 
from  the  lines  of  Brooklyn  which  averted  what  otherwise 
must  have  been  a  crowning  disaster ;  and  to  effect  that 
crossing  of  the  Delaware  on  a  mid-winter  midnight 
which  secured  for  him  the  most  sorely  wanted  of  all 
his  successes.  The  loyalist  poets  amused  themselves  by 
describing  how 

"  Priests,  tailors,  and  cobblers  fill  with  heroes  the  camp, 
And  sailors,  like  craw-fish,  crawl  out  of  each  swamp." 

But,  as  a  matter  of  history,  those  sailors  had  walked 
ashore  in  a  very  dangerous  temper  from  the  fishing 


248  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

vessels  which,  in  consequence  of  the  action  of  Parlia- 
ment, were  lying  useless  alongside  the  quays  of  every 
town  and  village  on  the  seaboard  of  New  England.1 

Fox's  argument,  roughly  and  insufficiently  reported, 
has  not  come  down  to  us  in  the  shape  for  insertion  in  a 
handbook  of  oratorical  extracts ;  but  it  has  the  stamp  of 
a  speech  hot  from  the  heart,  and  spoken  by  a  man  who 
thought  only  of  convincing  or  confuting  those  who 
heard  him,  without  caring  how  his  words  would  read 
on  the  next  morning,  or  in  another  century.  "  You  have 
now,"  said  Fox,  "  completed  the  system  of  your  folly. 
You  had  some  friends  yet  left  in  New  England.  You 
yourselves  made  a  parade  of  the  number  you  had  there. 
But  you  have  not  treated  them  like  friends.  How  must 
they  feel,  what  must  they  think,  when  the  people  against 
whom  they  have  stood  out  in  support  of  your  measures 
say  to  them :  '  You  see  now  what  friends  in  England 
you  have  depended  upon.  They  separated  you  from 
your  real  friends,  while  they  hoped  to  ruin  us  by  it ;  but 
since  they  cannot  destroy  us  without  mixing  you  in  the 
common  carnage,  your  merits  to  them  will  not  now  save 
you.  You  are  to  be  starved  indiscriminately  with  us. 
You  are  treated  in  common  with  us  as  rebels,  whether 
you  rebel  or  not.  Your  loyalty  has  ruined  you.  Re- 
bellion alone,  if  resistance  is  rebellion,  can  save  you 
from  famine  and  ruin.'  When  these  things  are  said  to 
them,  what  can  they  answer  ? " 

The  opposite  view  to  that  held  by  Fox  and  Burke 
did  not  suffer  for  want  of  being  boldly  stated.  A  recent 
addition  to  the  notabilities  of  Parliament  had  been  made 
in  the  person  of  Henry  Dundas,  now  Lord  Advocate 
for  Scotland,  who  very  soon  gave  indication  of  those 
qualities  which  were  to  win  for  him  his  considerable 
future,  and  his  unenviable  fame.  He  entered  on  his 
career  in  the  House  of  Commons  with  the  advantage  of 
having  early  in  life  played  leading  parts  on  a  narrower 
stage.  He  had  been  Solicitor- General  in  the  Court  of 
Session  of  Edinburgh  at  four  and  twenty ;  and  had 

1  The  verse  is  quoted  in  Tyler's  Literary  History. 


THE  AMERICAN  FISHERIES  249 

learned  to  debate,  if  he  had  learned  nothing  else  there 
for  his  profit,  in  the  General  Assembly  of  the  Church  of 
Scotland.  Tall  and  manly,  —  with  a  marked  national 
accent  of  which,  unlike  Wedderburn,  he  had  the  good 
sense  not  to  be  ashamed,  —  his  look  and  bearing  be- 
tokened indefatigable  powers  and  a  dominant  nature. 
His  face  showed  evident  marks  of  his  having  been  a 
hearty  fellow,  for  which  a  convivial  generation  liked 
him  none  the  less ;  especially  when  they  came  to  find 
that  his  speeches  had  other  things  in  them  which  were 
broad  besides  their  Scotch,1  and  that  those  who  followed 
him  closely  might  hope  to  carry  away  what  passed  for  a 
good  story  after  dinner,  in  circles  which  were  not  fas- 
tidious. Dundas  now  took  upon  himself  to  defend  the 
ministerial  proposal  against  the  strictures  of  Charles 
Fox.  The  measure,  he  said,  was  not  sanguinary ;  and, 
as  for  the  famine  which  was  so  pathetically  lamented, 
his  only  fear  was  that  the  Act  would  fail  to  produce  it. 
Though  prevented  from  fishing  in  the  sea,  the  New 
Englanders  had  fish  in  their  rivers ;  and  though  their 
country  was  not  fit  to  grow  wheat,  they  had  a  grain  of 
their  own,  their  Indian  corn,  on  which  they  could  sub- 
sist full  as  well  as  they  deserved. 

Such  was  the  man  who,  when  he  was  twenty  years 
older,  and  neither  more  nor  less  unfeeling,  had  at  his 
absolute  disposal  the  liberties  of  Scotland,  and  the  lives 
and  fortunes  of  all  who  loved  those  liberties  too  ardently 
for  their  own  safety.  On  the  present  occasion  Dundas 
had  gone  further  in  his  self-revelation  than  was  pleasing 
to  a  House  of  Commons  not  yet  accustomed  to  him  and 
his  ways.  Lord  John  Cavendish,  speaking  amidst  general 
sympathy,  gravely  rebuked  the  Minister  who  had  uttered 
sentiments  which  would  have  been  shocking  even  in  the 
mouth  of  a  parliamentary  buffoon ;  and  Burke  followed 

1  Omond's  Lord  Advocates  of  Scotland;  chapter  xiv.  Boswell,  who  had 
his  personal  jealousies,  and  his  own  political  ambitions  outside  the  Scotch 
Bar,  was  greatly  exercised  when  Dundas  began  to  play  a  part  in  London. 
He  called  the  new  Minister  "  a  coarse  dog."  The  specimen  of  Dundas's 
humour  referred  to  by  Mr.  Omond,  and  reported  in  the  2Oth  volume  of 
the  Parliamentary  History,  is  not  so  much  coarse  as  revolting. 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

up  the  attack  in  plain  vernacular  suited  to  the  character 
of  the  offence  which  he  was  chastising.  Nothing,  he 
said,  could  be  more  foolish,  more  cruel,  and  more  insult- 
ing than  to  hold  out  as  a  resource  to  the  starving  fisher- 
men, ship-builders,  and  ship-carpenters,  who  would  be 
ruined  by  the  Act  that,  after  the  plenty  of  the  Ocean, 
they  might  poke  in  the  brooks,  and  rake  in  the  puddles, 
and  diet  on  what  Englishmen  considered  as  husks  and 
draff  for  hogs.  The  friends  of  the  Government  who  had 
been  too  apt,  as  Horace  Walpole  said,  to  treat  the  Ameri- 
cans in  the  spirit  of  a  mob  ducking  a  pickpocket,  were 
ashamed  at  seeing  their  own  worst  features  distorted  in 
that  brazen  mirror.  The  Lord  Advocate  in  vain  at- 
tempted to  extenuate,  to  explain,  and,  if  possible,  to  ex- 
cuse his  conduct.  Even  the  majority  had  had  enough 
of  him ;  and  the  only  acceptable  sentence  of  his  second 
speech  was  that  in  which  he  announced  that  he  should 
bow  to  the  disposition  of  the  House,  and  say  no  more. 

It  was  time  that  an  example  should  be  made.  Sand- 
wich and  Rigby  were  the  two  Ministers  whose  words 
went  for  most,  because  it  was  believed  that  they  ruled 
the  Government.  As  if  by  concert  between  themselves, 
they  now  adopted  a  tone  of  forced  and  studied  inso- 
lence with  reference  to  the  colonists.  One  would  think, 
Rigby  said  in  the  House  of  Commons,  that  the  Ameri- 
cans were  otters  and  ate  nothing  but  fish.  As  to  the 
notion,  of  which  so  much  had  been  heard,  that  they 
might  find  courage  in  despair,  it  was  an  idea  thrown 
out  to  frighten  women  and  children.  They  had  not 
amongst  them  the  military  prowess  of  a  militia  drum- 
mer. The  Earl  of  Sandwich  enlarged  on  the  same 
theme  in  the  House  of  Lords.  What  did  it  signify,  he 
asked,  if  the  colonies  abounded  in  men,  so  long  as  they 
were  raw,  undisciplined,  and  cowardly?  For  his  own 
part  he  wished  that  they  would  put  into  the  field  not 
forty  thousand,  but  two  hundred  thousand,  so-called 
soldiers ;  as  the  greater  their  numbers,  the  easier  would 
be  the  conquest.  And  then  he  proceeded  to  tell  the 
peers  an  anecdote  which  he  professed  to  have  got  from 


THE  AMERICAN  FISHERIES  251 

Sir  Peter  Warren.  He  related  at  considerable  length, 
and  with  infinite  gusto,  how  at  the  siege  of  Louisburg  in 
1745  the  Americans  had  been  placed  in  the  front  of  the 
army ;  how  they  had  shown  much  elation  at  the  honour 
which  had  been  conferred  upon  them,  though  they 
boasted  that  it  was  no  more  than  their  due ;  how  they 
all  ran  away  when  the  first  shot  was  fired ;  how  Sir 
Peter  then  posted  them  in  the  rear,  and  told  them  that 
it  was  the  custom  of  generals  to  preserve  their  best 
troops  to  the  last,  especially  among  the  ancient  Romans, 
who  were  the  only  nation  that  ever  resembled  the 
Americans  in  courage  and  patriotism. 

The  story  was  a  lie,  on  the  face  of  it.  No  man  with 
a  grain  of  knowledge  about  military  affairs  would  have 
believed  it  for  a  moment ;  and  no  man  of  honour  would 
have  repeated  it  without  believing  it,  even  if  he  were 
not  a  responsible  Minister  addressing  Parliament.  By 
putting  it  into  the  mouth  of  a  British  Admiral,  Sandwich 
insulted  not  only  the  Americans,  but  the  honest  and 
generous  service  over  which  he  unworthily  presided. 
The  speech  was  a  poor  compliment  to  the  gratitude,  or 
else  to  the  information,  of  the  peers ;  for  it  was  known 
and  acknowledged  that  the  land  force  employed  in  those 
operations,  which  resulted  in  the  first  capture  of  Louis- 
burg,  had  been  levied  in  New  England,  and  had  behaved 
to  admiration.1  The  Lords  resented  the  language  which 

1  Parkman  says  in  the  first  chapter  of  his  Montcalm  and  Wolfe  :  "  New 
England  had  borne  the  heaviest  brunt  of  the  preceding  wars.  Having  no 
trained  officers,  and  no  disciplined  soldiers,  and  being  too  poor  to  maintain 
either,  she  borrowed  her  warriors  from  the  workshop  and  the  plough,  and 
officered  them  with  lawyers,  merchants,  mechanics,  and  farmers.  To  com- 
pare them  with  good  regular  troops  would  be  folly  ;  but  they  did,  on  the 
whole,  better  than  could  have  been  expected,  and  in  the  last  war  achieved 
the  brilliant  success  of  the  capture  of  Louisburg."  The  exploit,  Parkman  goes 
on  to  say,  was  owing  partly  to  good  luck,  and  partly  to  native  hardihood. 

Captain  Mahan  writes :  "  The  most  solid  success,  the  capture  of  Cape 
Breton  Island  in  1745,  was  achieved  by  the  colonial  forces  of  New  Eng- 
land, to  which  indeed  the  royal  navy  lent  valuable  aid ;  for  to  troops  so 
situated  the  fleet  is  the  one  line  of  communication."  Lord  Stanhope,  in 
his  History,  attributes  the  taking  of  Louisburg  to  the  people  of  New  Eng- 
land. "  For  their  commander  they  chose  Mr.  Pepperel,  a  private  gentle- 
man, in  whom  courage  and  sagacity  supplied  the  place  of  military  skill." 


252  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

Sandwich  had  addressed  to  them.  The  Earl  of  Suffolk, 
Secretary  of  State  though  he  was,  took  his  colleague  of 
the  Admiralty  roundly  to  task ;  and  sixteen  peers,  in  the 
Protest  which  they  entered  on  the  Journals,  recorded 
their  opinion  that  the  topic  so  much  insisted  upon  by  a 
Lord  high  in  office,  namely  the  cowardice  of  his  Majesty's 
American  subjects,  had  no  weight  in  itself  as  an  argu- 
ment for  the  bill,  and  was  not  at  all  agreeable  to  the 
dignity  of  sentiment  which  ought  to  characterise  their 
House. 

These  taunts,  directed  against  a  people  as  high-mettled 
as  our  own,  and  more  acutely  alive  to  what  was  said  and 
thought  about  them,  exercised  on  the  martial  spirit  of  the 
colonists  the  same  effect  as  Wedderburn's  speech  before 
the  Privy  Council  had  produced  on  their  political  sensi- 
bilities. The  records  of  America,  during  the  next  two 
years,  indicate  on  every  page  how  many  recruits  of  the 
choicest  sort  were  impelled  into  her  armies  by  the  deter- 
mination that  such  a  reproach  should  be  proved  a  cal- 
umny. Her  national  literature,  throughout  the  next 
generation,  shows  that  the  memory  rankled  long  after 
the  veterans  who  survived  the  war  had  gone  back  to  the 
stack-yard  and  the  counting-house.  Unfortunately  no 
one  intervened  in  the  debates  who,  with  the  authority 
of  personal  experience,  could  testify  to  the  real  value  of 
the  colonial  militiamen.  Those  great  soldiers,  who  had 
served  with  them  in  the  field,  were  in  retirement  or  in 
the  grave.  Chatham,  who  owed  them  so  large  a  debt, 
was  prevented  by  ill  health  from  coming  down  to  the 
House  of  Lords  in  order  to  abash  their  detractors.  From 
his  sick-chamber  he  wistfully  and  critically  watched  all 
that  was  passing  ;  and  he  was  not  left  without  his  con- 
solations. The  Marquis  of  Granby,  before  he  came  of 
age,  had  been  returned  as  member  for  the  University  of 
Cambridge  for  the  sake  of  the  hero  whose  noble  portrait, 
as  he  stands  by  his  charger,  lights  up  the  Great  Com- 
bination Room  of  Trinity  College  with  life  and  colour. 
The  son  was  resolved  that,  as  far  as  he  could  speak  for 
his  dead  father,  something  should  be  heard,  even  at 


THE  AMERICAN  FISHERIES  253 

second  hand,  from  one  who  had  learned  to  be  a  judge 
of  courage  amid  scenes  very  different  from  those  with 
which  the  Bedfords  were  familiar.  Breaking  silence  for 
the  first  time,  he  followed  Rigby  with  a  fine  vindication 
of  the  colonists,  and  a  happily  expressed  tribute  to  the 
Minister  who  had  made  use  of  their  valour  for  the  pro- 
tection and  enlargement  of  the  Empire.  His  reward 
was  a  letter  dictated  by  Chatham,  exquisite  in  feeling,  and 
containing  words  of  praise  which,  coming  from  such  a 
quarter,  would  do  more  than  volumes  of  good  advice  to 
turn  a  young  man  into  the  right  path.1 

It  may  be  observed  with  satisfaction  that  the  chorus 
of  calumny  was  swelled  by  no  one  with  soldierly  ante- 
cedents, or  with  the  making  of  a  soldier  in  him.  Captain 
Acland,  who  was  much  too  ready  to  inform  Parliament 
how  cordially  he  disliked  the  inhabitants  of  Massachu- 
setts, always  spoke  of  their  martial  qualities  with  decency, 
and  even  with  respect.  The  time  was  not  far  distant 
when  he  learned  the  whole  truth  about  the  fighting  value 
of  New  Englanders.  After  the  last  of  a  succession  of 
hot  engagements,  in  all  of  which  he  had  shown  daring 
and  skill,  he  was  picked  up  desperately  wounded,  well 
within  the  American  lines ;  and,  in  the  course  of  the  en- 
suing year,  his  services  to  his  country  were  cut  short  in 
a  duel  with  a  brother  officer  who  had  sneered  in  his 
presence  at  the  military  character  of  those  colonists 
whom,  brave  as  he  was,  Acland  knew  to  be  no  less 
brave  than  himself. 

1  Chatham  to  Granby,  April  7,  1775  ;  from  a  draft  in  Lady  Chatham's 
handwriting. 


CHAPTER    VIII 

AMHERST    AND    GAGE.       THE    MASSACHUSETTS    CONGRESS. 
HOSTILITIES    BECOME    IMMINENT.       LEXINGTON 

RIGBY  had  told  the  House  of  Commons  that,  if  the 
Acts  against  which  Congress  protested  were  repealed, 
the  seat  of  the  Empire  would  henceforward  be  at  Phila- 
delphia ;  and  he  recommended  gentlemen  ambitious  of 
a  career  to  transfer  themselves  to  that  capital,  and  enjoy 
the  honour  of  consorting  with  Dr.  Franklin.  For  the 
great  American  had  now  started  on  his  way  back  across 
the  ocean ;  though  it  was  no  fault  of  Rigby  that  he  was 
not  still  in  London,  and  in  very  uncomfortable  quarters. 
If,  by  the  publication  of  Hutchinson's  letters,  Franklin 
contributed  to  embroil  the  relations  between  England 
and  the  colonies,  he  had  abundantly  expiated  his  own 
error,  and  had  done  his  best  to  redeem  the  errors  of 
others.  His  existence  during  the  last  fourteen  months 
had  been  one  long  penance,  which  he  endured  manfully 
and  patiently,  because  he  was  conscious  that  he,  and  he 
alone,  possessed  in  combination  the  knowledge,  position, 
character,  and  capacity  indispensable  to  any  one  who 
aspired  to  bring  the  last  faint  chance  of  peace  to  a  suc- 
cessful issue.  On  the  day  after  the  scene  in  the  Privy 
Council  Office,  he  had  been  dismissed  from  his  Postmas- 
tership;  and,  of  his  own  accord,  he  dispensed  himself 
from  all  diplomatic  ceremonies,  keeping  aloof  from 
levees,  and  abstaining  from  direct  and  ostensible  inter- 
course with  Cabinet  Ministers,  the  most  powerful  among 
whom  made  no  secret  of  their  opinion  that  the  proper 
residence  for  him  was  the  inside  of  Newgate.  Mean- 
while his  wife,  to  whom  he  had  been  happily  married 
forty-four  years,  and  fn?r»  w.horn  he  had  been  parted 

254 


AMHERST  AND   GAGE  255 

for  ten,  was  dying  at  home  in  Pennsylvania ;  and  he 
never  saw  her  again.  But  at  no  time  in  his  life  was 
his  society  so  eagerly  courted  by  such  eminent  men,  for 
the  promotion  of  such  momentous  objects.  Chatham, 
(whom  Franklin  had  once  found  unapproachable,  but 
who,  as  is  the  case  with  strong  and  haughty,  but  gener- 
ous, natures,  had  grown  mild  and  mellow  with  years,) 
secured  him  as  a  guest  in  Kent,  called  on  him  at  his 
lodgings  in  a  street  off  the  Strand,  and  took  care  to  be 
seen  paying  him  marked  attention  in  public.  In  the 
House  of  Lords  the  old  statesman,  with  characteristic 
ignorance  of  the  non-essential,  took  Franklin  to  the 
space  before  the  throne,  which  is  reserved  for  Privy 
Councillors  and  the  eldest  sons  of  peers.  On  learning 
his  mistake  he  limped  back  to  the  outer  Bar,  and  com- 
mended his  friend  to  the  care  of  the  door-keepers  in 
accents  which  all  might  hear. 

Lord  Howe,  now  a  Rear  Admiral,  who,  if  hostilities 
broke  out,  was  sure  of  an  important  command,  honoured 
himself  by  an  endeavour  to  avert  a  war  which  could 
not  fail  to  bring  him  wealth,  however  small  might  be 
the  opportunity  for  acquiring  glory.  He  commissioned 
his  sister  to  challenge  Franklin  to  a  trial  of  skill  at 
chess,  and  contrived  to  be  within  call  on  an  evening 
when  the  invitation  had  been  accepted.1  Lord  Howe, 
in  the  phrase  of  the  day,  opened  himself  freely  to  his 
new  acquaintance  on  the  alarming  situation  of  affairs, 
and  put  him  into  communication  with  Lord  Hyde,  the 
Chancellor  of  the  Duchy  of  Lancaster  ;  and  Lord  Hyde, 
as  was  well  understood  all  round,  meant  Lord  Dart- 
mouth. The  Secretary  for  the  Colonies  would  have 
given  his  salary,  many  times  told,  to  prevent  bloodshed ; 
though  in  the  last  resort  he  could  not  induce  himself  to 
thwart,  or  even  to  contradict,  a  master  towards  whom  he 
entertained  a  true  attachment,  and  who  esteemed  him 
as  he  deserved.  For  George  the  Third  was  at  his  very 
best  when  exchanging  ideas  with  Dartmouth  for  any 

1  Franklin's  Account  of  Negotiations  in  London  for  effecting  a  Recon- 
ciliation between  Great  Britain  and  the  American  Colonies. 


2$6  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

other  purpose  than  that  of  harrying  him  into  harrying 
the  Americans.  "  If  the  first  of  duties,"  (so  the  Mon- 
arch wrote  to  the  Minister  in  July,  1773,)  "  that  to  God, 
is  not  known,  I  fear  no  other  can  be  expected ;  and  as 
to  the  fashionable  word  '  honour,'  that  will  never  alone 
guide  a  man  farther  than  to  preserve  appearance.  I 
will  not  add  more ;  for  I  know  I  am  writing  to  a  true 
believer ;  one  who  shows  by  his  actions  that  he  is  not 
governed  by  the  greatest  of  tyrants,  Fashion."  A  slave 
of  Fashion  Dartmouth  was  not ;  but  he  was  too  subser- 
vient to  Lord  North,  and  most  terribly  afraid  of  Lord 
Sandwich.1 

An  unofficial  negotiation  for  settling  the  difficulties 
between  Great  Britain  and  the  colonies  was  set  on  foot 
forthwith.  The  details  were  conducted  by  Franklin  in 
concert  with  two  of  those  Englishmen  of  the  middle 
class  who,  if  a  chance  was  given  them,  were  able  and 
willing  to  employ  upon  the  business  of  the  nation  the 
same  diligence  and  sagacity  with  which  they  had  long 
managed  their  own.  Mr.  Barclay  was  a  well-known 
member  of  the  Society  of  Friends,  as  likewise  was  his 
colleague,  Dr.  Fothergill ;  a  physician  with  a  great 
London  practice,  and  a  Natural  Historian  of  remark- 
able distinction.  Their  deliberations  took  shape  in  a 
document  called  by  the  modest  name  of  a  "  Paper  of 
Hints  for  Conversation."  In  truth  it  was  the  draft  of 
a  treaty  which,  if  it  had  been  approved,  signed,  and 
ratified,  would  have  had  a  merit  rare  among  the  cele- 
brated instruments  in  history  ;  —  that  of  terminating  a 
sharp  and  extended  controversy  rationally,  equitably, 
permanently,  and  without  derogation  to  the  self-esteem 
of  either  of  the  contracting  parties.  A  copy  of  the  pro- 
posed Articles  had  been  in  Dartmouth's  hands,  and  he 

1  His  Majesty,  on  one  occasion,  asked  Dr.  Beattie  what  he  thought  of 
Lord  Dartmouth  ;  and  the  author  of  the  Essay  on  Truth  responded  with 
effusion  which  bordered  on  the  fulsome.  The  King,  who  spoke  and  wrote 
a  style  greatly  preferable  to  that  of  some  among  his  subjects  who  most 
pleased  the  literary  taste  of  the  hour,  smiled  and  said :  "  Doctor  Beattie, 
you  are  perfectly  right.  I  think  precisely  the  same  of  him  myself.  He 
is  certainly  a  most  excellent  man." 


AMU  ERST  AND    GAGE 

expressed  himself  about  them  hopefully  and  favourably 
in  private.  On  the  first  of  February,  1775,  Chatham 
presented  to  Parliament  a  Bill  for  settling  the  troubles 
in  America,  and  the  Secretary  for  the  Colonies  begged 
their  Lordships  not  to  kill  the  measure  by  an  immediate 
vote,  but  to  let  it  lie  on  the  Table  until  it  had  received 
their  careful  and  respectful  consideration.  In  his  sin- 
cere desire  to  do  his  duty,  according  to  the  light  of  his 
own  understanding,  Dartmouth  had  for  a  moment 
forgotten  the  terrors  of  the  Bedfords.  Sandwich,  who 
suspected  that  peace  was  in  the  crucible,  knew  only  too 
well  that  premature  publicity  may  be  as  discomforting 
to  those  who  are  planning  good  as  to  those  who  are 
plotting  evil.  He  chose  his  moment  with  a  sinister  ad- 
dress, worthy  of  the  orator  who  turned  the  debate  in  the 
Second  Book  of  "  Paradise  Lost."  Looking  full  and 
hard  at  Franklin,  who  was  leaning  over  the  Bar,  Sand- 
wich exclaimed  that  he  had  in  his  eye  the  person  who 
drew  up  the  proposals  which  were  under  discussion,  — 
one  of  the  bitterest  and  most  mischievous  enemies  whom 
England  had  ever  known.  Chatham  hastened  to  inter- 
pose the  shield  of  his  eloquence  for  the  protection  of 
one  who  might  not  speak  for  himself  within  those  walls  ; 
but  Franklin  was  not  the  quarry  at  whom  Sandwich 
aimed.  The  shaft  had  gone  home  to  the  breast  towards 
which  it  was  really  levelled.  Dartmouth  rose  once 
more,  and  said  that  he  could  not  press  a  course  which 
evidently  was  unacceptable  to  their  Lordships,  and  that 
he  himself  would  give  his  voice  for  rejecting  the  Bill 
forthwith. 

The  scheme  of  reconciliation,  which  promised  so  fairly, 
had  received  its  death-blow.  Franklin,  who  was  deter- 
mined to  leave  no  device  untried,  offered  to  pay  the  East 
India  Company  for  their  tea  on  the  security  of  his 
private  fortune,  and,  (he  might  have  added,)  at  the  risk 
of  his  popularity  among  his  own  countrymen.  Mr. 
Barclay  on  the  other  hand,  in  his  honest  eagerness  to 
save  the  irretrievable,  hinted  that,  if  the  representa- 
tive of  America  would  show  himself  sufficiently  easy  to 
VOL.  i.  s 


2$8  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

deal  with,  he  might  expect  not  only  to  be  reinstated  in 
the  Postmastership  which  he  had  lost,  but  to  get  any 
place  under  Government  that  he  cared  to  ask  for. 
Franklin,  more  offended  than  he  chose  to  show,  replied 
that  the  only  place  the  Ministry  would  willingly  give 
him  was  a  place  in  a  cart  to  Tyburn  ;  but  that  he  would 
do  his  utmost  without  any  other  inducement  than  the 
wish  to  be  serviceable.  The  proceedings  of  the  confer- 
ence trickled  on  for  a  few  weeks,  and  then  ended  in  a 
marsh  ;  as  must  always  be  the  case  where  the  agents  on 
either  of  the  two  sides  are  not  their  own  masters,  but 
have  those  behind  them  who  intend  the  negotiations  to 
fail.  By  the  middle  of  March  Dr.  Fothergill  sadly  ad- 
mitted that  the  pretence  of  an  accommodation  was 
specious,  but  altogether  hollow  ;  and  that  the  great  folks, 
whom  he  was  in  the  habit  of  attending  as  patients,  had 
all  along  regarded  the  colonies  as  nothing  better  than 
"  a  larger  field  on  which  to  fatten  a  herd  of  worthless 
parasites."  Some  days  afterwards  Franklin  sailed  for 
Philadelphia,  and  beguiled  a  protracted  voyage  by  draw- 
ing up  an  account  of  the  doleful  transactions  on  which 
he  had  been  recently  engaged,  and  by  the  more  profit- 
able and  congenial  occupation  of  testing  with  his  ther- 
mometer the  breadth  and  the  direction  of  the  Gulf 
Stream. 

After  a  short  interval  he  was  followed  across  the 
Atlantic  by  emissaries  the  colour  of  whose  coats  showed 
that  the  day  of  grace  was  passed.  The  affairs  of 
America  were  in  a  tangle  which  the  King,  and  his  Min- 
isters, had  neither  the  will  nor  the  wit  to  unravel.  The 
knot  was  now  for  the  sword  to  cut,  and  they  looked 
around  them  for  a  man  who  had  the  skill  of  his  weapon. 
Clive,  and  his  old  chief  Lawrence,  had  died  within  the 
last  few  months.  Granby  had  fought  in  the  best  British 
fashion  at  the  head  of  a  British  contingent  as  large  as  a 
formidable  army;  and  Wolfe  had  done  miracles  with 
smaller  numbers.  But  they  both  had  gone,  leaving 
nothing  except  their  example.  Lord  Albemarle  too  was 
dead,  who  as  General  of  the  land  forces  in  the  West 


AMHERST  AND    GAGE 

Indies  had  shared  with  the  navy  in  the  undoubted  hon- 
our, and  the  vast  profit,  which  accrued  from  the  conquest 
of  Havanna.  As  an  officer  who  had  been  tried  in  a 
supreme  command  there  remained  Sir  Jeffrey  Amherst. 
He  had  won  his  laurels  in  America,  where  he  had 
gained  the  character  of  a  cautious  and  sound  strategist. 
His  name  stood  high  among  the  colonists,  who  had 
formed  half  of  the  very  considerable  body  of  troops 
which  he  was  careful  to  gather  around  him  before  he 
opened  a  campaign  ;  whom  he  had  treated  handsomely ; 
and  to  whose  co-operation  he  gratefully  attributed  an 
ample  portion  of  the  credit  of  his  victory. 

The  judgement  of  new  Englanders  on  their  rulers, 
when  newspapers  were  few  and  cautious,  was  to  be  found 
in  their  sermons,  which  never  flattered  those  whom  the 
preacher  and  his  hearers  did  not  love.  When  Montreal 
was  taken  in  the  autumn  of  1760,  the  pulpits  rang  with 
praises  of  "  the  intrepid,  the  serene,  the  successful 
Amherst."  The  pastor  of  Brookfield,  who  had  been  a 
chaplain  in  a  Massachusetts  regiment,  (for  American 
military  chaplains  generally  contrived  to  smell  whatever 
powder  was  being  burned,)  after  hailing  the  downfall 
of  the  Canadian  Babylon,  broke  out  into  praises  of 
Amherst,  the  renowned  general,  worthy  of  that  most 
honourable  of  all  titles,  the  Christian  hero ;  who  loved 
his  enemies,  and  while  he  subdued  them,  made  them 
happy.  Amherst  had  indeed  endeavoured  to  infuse 
some  chivalry  and  humanity  into  the  rude,  and  often 
horrible,  warfare  of  the  backwoods ;  and  his  severities, 
sharp  enough  on  occasion,  were  necessitated  by  the 
hideous  cruelties  which  the  Indian  allies  of  France 
inflicted  upon  the  farming  population  of  the  English 
border. 

Amherst  had  proved  himself  a  stout  warrior  elsewhere 
than  in  the  field.  In  the  year  1768  he  had  been  in  col- 
lision with  the  King  over  a  matter  about  which  neither 
was  in  the  right ;  and  the  General  had  come  off  with 
flying  colours  and  abundance  of  spoil.  A  Court  favour- 
ite had  been  nominated  to  a  post  which  Amherst  held, 

S2 


260  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

but  the  work  of  which  he  did  not  do.  In  his  wrath  he 
threw  up  all  his  functions  and  appointments,  and  aroused 
such  a  commotion  in  the  political  and  military  world  that 
he  had  to  be  coaxed  back  at  any  sacrifice.  He  returned 
to  the  official  ranks  stronger,  and  better  endowed  with 
public  money,  than  ever ;  and  neither  minister  nor  mon- 
arch ventured  to  disturb  him  again.  By  January  1775 
George  the  Third  had  reconsidered  the  favourable 
opinion  which  he  had  formed  of  General  Gage,  and  now 
declared  him  wanting  in  activity  and  decision.  He  pro- 
posed to  confer  upon  Amherst  the  command  of  the 
troops  in  America,  together  with  a  commission  to  use 
his  well-known  influence  and  popularity  among  the  col- 
onists for  the  purpose  of  inducing  them  to  make  their 
peace  before  recourse  was  had  to  arms.  Gage  mean- 
while, by  an  arrangement  in  which  the  tax-payer  was  the 
last  person  thought  of,  was  to  continue  Governor  of 
Massachusetts,  and  to  draw  his  pay  as  Commander-in- 
Chief.  George  the  Third  undertook  in  person  the  task 
of  appealing  to  Amherst's  loyalty,  which  he  endeavoured 
further  to  stimulate  by  the  offer  of  a  peerage.  In  the 
disagreeable  and  disastrous  war  which  was  now  at  hand, 
titles  were  of  use  rather  for  the  purpose  of  tempting 
men  into  active  service,  than  of  rewarding  them 
when  they  returned  from  it.  The  veteran  stated  very 
plainly  that  he  could  not  bring  himself  to  serve  against 
the  Americans,  "  to  whom  he  had  been  so  much 
obliged."  The  King,  with  sincere  regret,  informed  Dart- 
mouth that  Amherst  could  not  be  persuaded.  It  only 
remained,  he  said,  to  do  the  next  best ;  to  leave  the 
command  with  Gage,  and  send  to  his  assistance  the 
ablest  generals  that  could  be  thought  of. 

The  choice  of  those  generals  was  not  an  act  of  favour- 
itism. George  the  Third,  as  long  as  he  continued  to  trans- 
act public  business,  looked  closely  into  all  high  military 
appointments  which  involved  grave  military  responsibili- 
ties. His  judgement  was  excellent  save  when,  as  in  the 
case  of  the  Duke  of  York,  it  was  misled  by  consider- 
ations of  family  interest  and  of  strong  affection.  Deter- 


AMHERST  AND    GAGE  26 1 

mined  to  have  his  armies  well  commanded,  he  set  aside 
his  personal  inclinations,  and  overcame  his  political 
prejudices.  In  time  of  peace  and  war  alike,  even  when 
he  was  told  that  the  salvation  of  the  country  depended 
on  it,  no  importunity  from  a  Cabinet  which  required 
strengthening  could  prevail  on  him  to  employ  a  statesman 
whom  he  regarded  as  an  opponent ;  and  between  one 
war  and  another  he  was  far  from  overlooking  political 
considerations  in  his  treatment  of  the  army  and  the  navy. 
Whenever  a  veteran,  scarred  with  wounds  and  honoured 
throughout  the  whole  service,  ventured  to  give  a  vote 
displeasing  to  the  King,  he  was  harshly  received  at 
Court,  and  ruthlessly  deprived  of  the  rewards  which  his 
valour  had  earned.  But  when  hostilities  broke  out,  if  a 
famous  soldier  or  sailor,  who  had  been  wronged  and 
slighted,  had  any  fight  left  in  him,  George  the  Third  did 
not  fail  to  display  what  moralists  class  as  the  rarest 
form  of  magnanimity,  —  that  of  overlooking  the  injuries 
which  he  himself  had  inflicted. 

Ingratitude  during  peace,  alternating  with  a  tardy 
recognition  of  merit  under  the  pressure  of  war,  up  to 
the  very  last  marked  George  the  Third's  dealings  with 
great  soldiers  whose  politics  displeased  him.  Sir  John 
Moore  complained  that  he  was  treated  as  a  "  bad  sub- 
ject "  by  the  King,  for  whom  he  had  been  wounded  five 
times,  and  the  discipline  and  efficiency  of  whose  army 
he  had  done  more  than  any  living  man  to  restore.  At 
length,  when  he  was  wanted  for  the  chief  command  in 
Spain,  George  the  Third  "very  graciously," — and,  it 
must  be  owned,  very  candidly,  —  said  that  a  stop  should 
be  put  to  persecution,  and  that  Sir  John  Moore  "  must 
not  be  plagued  any  more."  Lord  Lynedoch  had  been 
nothing  but  a  Whig  country  gentleman  till  he  was  five 
and  forty ;  and  a  Whig  country  gentleman  he  remained 
until  he  died  at  ninety-five  with  a  military  reputation 
second  only  to  that  of  Wellington.  He  was  even  worse 
used  than  his  friend  and  patron  Sir  John  Moore;  for 
the  King  angrily  refused  to  give  him  army-rank.  His 
Majesty  quarrelled  even  with  Lord  Melville  when  that 


262  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

statesman  protested  against  the  treatment  to  which  so 
distinguished  an  officer  was  exposed,  and  was  quite  pre- 
pared to  quarrel  over  the  same  matter  with  Pitt.  After 
Corunna,  when  such  a  sword  as  Graham's  could  not  be 
suffered  to  remain  idle,  he  at  length  received  his  due,  and 
was  sent  as  Wellington's  right-hand  man  to  the  Penin- 
sula, where  he  won  Barossa  and  helped  to  win  Vittoria.1 

Chief  among  the  three  Major-Generals  selected  to 
serve  in  America  in  the  spring  of  1775  was  William 
Howe,  brother  of  the  Admiral,  and  of  the  Lord  Howe 
who  fell  at  Ticonderoga  in  the  year  1758.  That  noble- 
man, who  was  an  Irish  viscount,  had  been  member  for 
Nottingham.  When  the  news  of  his  death  reached 
England,  his  mother  in  pathetic  terms  urged  the  people 
of  the  city,  which  her  son  had  represented,  to  replace 
him  by  his  younger  brother,  who  himself  was  then  at 
the  front  with  his  regiment.  So  William  Howe  was 
nominated  and  chosen,  and  had  sat  for  Nottingham 
ever  since.  At  the  general  election  of  1774  he  told  his 
constituents  that  the  whole  British  army  together  would 
not  be  numerous  enough  to  conquer  America,  and  as- 
sured them  that,  if  he  were  offered  a  command  against 
the  colonists,  he  would  not  scruple  to  refuse  it.  The 
King,  who  knew  him  as  a  splendid  officer,  the  discipline 
of  whose  battalion  had  been  a  model,  and  whose  gal- 
lantry was  a  proverb,  himself  was  courageous  enough 
to  take  the  risk  of  a  rebuff  from  his  valiant  subject. 
Invited  to  sail  for  America,  Howe  inquired  whether  he 
was  to  consider  the  message  as  a  request  or  an  order ; 
and,  on  being  informed  that  it  was  an  order,  he  obeyed 
it.  He  came  back  before  the  end  of  the  Parliament, 
with  a  reputation  for  every  military  quality,  except  that 
of  coolness  under  fire,  sadly  impaired, — to  find  at  the 
next  election  that  the  freemen  of  Nottingham  had  good 
memories,  and  a  different  view  of  his  personal  obliga- 
tions from  that  which  he  himself  had  held. 

The  next  of  the  three  was  John  Burgoyne.  He  had 
gone  through  the  usual  experiences  of  a  distinguished 

1  Delavoye's  Life  of  Lord  Lyntdoch,  pp.  269,  262,  249,  250. 


AMHERST  AND    GAGE  263 

military  man  who  was  likewise  a  politician.  He  had 
been  thanked  in  his  seat  in  Parliament ;  he  had  received 
the  Governorship  of  a  fortress  in  marked  and  special 
recognition  of  his  brilliant  valour ;  and  he  had  been  the 
subject  of  a  letter  in  which  the  King  told  the  Prime 
Minister  that,  if  Colonel  Burgoyne  had  not  been  pru- 
dent enough  to  vote  for  the  Royal  Marriage  Bill,  his 
Majesty  would  certainly  have  taken  that  Governorship, 
away.  Burgoyne's  sentiments  towards  the  colonists 
were  friendly,  but  his  view  of  the  legal  and  constitu- 
tional aspect  of  the  controversy  was  not  favourable  to 
their  claims.  He  agreed  to  serve  against  them  without 
compunction,  though  he  missed  that  sense  of  exhilara- 
tion which  he  had  hitherto  felt  whenever  he  had  gone 
to  meet  the  enemy.  He  confessed  his  lack  of  enthu- 
siasm to  his  Sovereign  in  a  letter  not  unbecoming  a 
soldier,  but  too  long  and  too  laboured,  like  all  which  Bur- 
goyne ever  wrote  even  under  circumstances  calculated 
to  prune  and  chasten  the  most  copious  and  flowery  style. 
The  third  Major-General  was  Henry  Clinton,  who  had 
learned  his  trade  under  Prince  Ferdinand  during  the 
Seven  Years'  War,  and  who  now  was  member  for 
Newark,  and  a  supporter  of  the  Ministry.  The  dash 
and  dexterity  with  which  these  officers,  one  and  all, 
had  seized  their  opportunities,  in  America,  in  Portugal, 
or  in  Germany,  fully  justified  the  King  in  his  hope  that 
they  would  be  equal  to  larger  enterprises ;  and  the  pub- 
lic opinion  of  the  army  confirmed  his  choice.  The  con- 
nection between  war  and  politics,  in  the  aristocratic 
England  of  four  generations  ago,  was  not  less  close 
than  in  the  great  days  of  ancient  Rome.  Then  the 
scion  of  a  consular  family  courted  the  suffrages  of  the 
people  in  order  that  he  might  go  forth  to  command 
their  legions;  and  returned  to  the  senate  from  Spain, 
or  Gaul,  or  Pontus,  to  be  congratulated  if  he  had  tri- 
umphed, or  to  defend  himself  in  case  things  had  gone 
badly  with  him  in  the  field.  The  three  Major-Generals 
were  all  members  of  Parliament,  and  all  remained  mem- 
bers while  year  after  year  they  were  campaigning  and 


264  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

administrating  thousands  of  miles  away  from  Westmin- 
ster. After  the  frightful  miscarriages  which  befell  them 
personally,  or  which  had  taken  place  under  their  auspices, 
they  all  resumed  their  seats  on  their  accustomed  bench 
in  the  House  of  Commons  as  naturally  and  quietly  as  if 
they  had  come  back  from  a  week  of  partridge  shooting. 
The  expedient  adopted  was  singularly  unfortunate. 
If  any  one  of  the  three  had  been  invested  with  the 
command  in  chief,  he  would,  for  the  sake  of  his  own 
reputation,  have  applied  to  the  War  Office  for  as  many 
regiments  as  could  be  spared  from  home  duties  ;  and, 
being  on  the  spot  in  London,  he  would  have  made  his 
representations  felt.  But  no  Ministry  will  press  upon 
an  absent  general  larger  means  and  appliances  than 
those  which  he  insists  on  having.  Gage  was  the  author 
of  the  pleasant  theory  that  the  military  side  of  the  diffi- 
culty would  prove  to  be  a  very  small  matter.  He  now 
had  begun  to  be  alarmed,  and  wrote  in  vague  terms 
about  the  necessity  of  being  provided  with  a  "  very  re- 
spectable force  "  ;  but  during  his  recent  visit  to  England, 
speaking  as  a  soldier  who  knew  the  colonies  and  who 
was  responsible  for  keeping  them,  he  had  set  going  a 
notion  that  the  Americans  were  unwarlike  as  a  com- 
munity, and  pusillanimous  as  individuals.  That  agree- 
able and  convenient  idea  had  been  eagerly  caught  up 
by  the  noisiest  members  of  the  Government,  and  had 
been  employed  by  them  in  public  as  an  argument  against 
those  who  condemned  their  policy  as  hazardous.  They 
had  assured  Parliament  that  a  course  of  coercion  would 
be  effective,  safe,  and  the  very  reverse  of  costly  ;  and 
this  they  had  done  on  Gage's  authority.  He  had  named 
a  limited  number  of  additional  battalions  as  the  outside 
which  he  would  require  in  order  to  complete  the  busi- 
ness;  and  those  battalions  he  should  have,  and  not  a 
musket  more.  The  reinforcements  which  accompanied 
Howe  and  Burgoyne  across  the  sea  brought  up  the 
garrison  at  Boston  to  ten  thousand  men.  It  was  an 
army  powerful  enough  to  inspire  all  the  colonies  with 
alarm  for  their  independence,  and  so  burdensome  as 


AMHERST  AND   GAGE  26$ 

to  irritate  Massachusetts  beyond  endurance ;  but  it  was 
utterly  inadequate  to  the  task  of  holding  down  New 
England,  and  ludicrously  insufficient  for  the  enterprise 
of  conquering,  and  afterwards  controlling,  America. 
When  the  war  had  endured  a  twelvemonth  David 
Hume,  —  who  had  lived  through  an  eventful  period 
of  our  history,  and  had  written  almost  all  the  rest  of  it, 
—  pronounced  that  the  show  of  statesmen  in  power, 
and  generals  and  admirals  in  command,  had  up  to  that 
point  been  the  poorest  ever  known  in  the  annals  of  the 
country.  Of  those  generals  Gage  was  the  first,  and 
perhaps  the  worst ;  and  in  his  combined  quality  of  civil 
administrator,  military  leader,  and  above  all  of  adviser 
to  the  Government  in  London,  he  played,  for  a  very 
small  man,  a  material  and  prominent  part  in  the  prepa- 
ration of  an  immense  catastrophe. 

A  Governor  who  was  bound  by  statute  to  destroy  the 
liberties  of  his  province,  and  ruin  the  prosperity  of  its 
capital,  had  a  very  narrow  margin  within  which  he 
could  display  himself  as  a  beneficent  ruler;  but  there 
were  two  ways  of  discharging  even  such  a  commission. 
Obliged  to  punish,  Gage  should  have  avoided  the  ap- 
pearance of  enjoying  the  work  on  which  he  was  em- 
ployed, unless  he  was  prepared  to  abandon  the  hope  of 
ultimately  playing  the  peacemaker;  and  that  function 
was  one  among  the  many  which  he  was  called  upon  to 
fulfil.  He  had  been  confidentially  instructed  by  the 
King  to  "  insinuate  to  New  York  and  such  other  colo- 
nies as  were  not  guided  by  the  madness  of  the  times," 
proposals  which  might  entice  them  back  to  due  obedi- 
ence, without  putting  "the  dagger  to  their  throats."1 
The  General  had  already  tried  his  hand  at  pacification. 
In  October  1774  he  wrote  to  the  President  of  the 
Congress  at  Philadelphia  congratulating  him  on  his  en- 
deavours after  a  cordial  reconciliation  with  the  mother- 
country,  and  promising  his  own  services  as  a  mediator.2 

1  George  the  Third  to  Dartmouth  ;  Jan.  31,  1775. 

2  Historical  Manuscripts  Commission.     Fourteenth  Report,  Appendix, 
Part  X. 


266  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

He  might  have  spared  his  fine  phrases.  He  was  the 
last  man  whose  arbitration  or  intervention  would  have 
been  accepted  by  any  New  Englander  endowed  with 
a  grain  of  local  patriotism ;  for  by  making  public  refer- 
ence to  a  hackneyed  and  offensive  taunt  he  had  done 
that  which  private  persons  seldom  forgive,  and  com- 
munities never.  To  be  called  a  saint  by  the  unsaint-iike 
is  a  form  of  canonisation  which  nowhere  is  held  to  be 
a  compliment;  and  just  now  there  was  something  too 
much  of  it  in  Boston.  "  The  inhabitants  of  this  col- 
ony," wrote  an  officer,  "with  the  most  austere  show  of 
devotion  are  void  of  every  principle  of  religion  or  com- 
mon honesty,  and  reckoned  the  most  arrant  cheats  and 
hypocrites  in  America."  That  was  the  creed  of  the 
barracks ;  and  Gage  paid  it  the  homage  of  a  joke  such 
as  a  parcel  of  subalterns  might  have  concocted  after 
mess,  and  been  ashamed  of  long  before  the  eldest  of 
them  had  got  his  company.  When  Massachusetts, 
threatened  in  her  liberties  and  her  commerce,  bowed 
her  head,  (though  not  in  fear,)  and  set  aside  a  day  for 
prayer  and  fasting,  he  inflicted  a  deliberate  and  official 
insult  on  the  people  whom  he  governed  by  issuing  a 
proclamation  against  Hypocrisy.  Having  thus  para- 
lysed, for  ever  and  a  day,  his  power  of  acting  as  an  in- 
tercessor between  the  Crown  and  the  colony,  he  informed 
the  Cabinet  that,  public  feeling  in  America  being  what 
it  was,  the  penal  Acts  could  not  be  enforced,  and  had 
much  better  be  suspended. 

Such  a  recommendation,  from  the  very  man  whose 
sanguine  assurances  had  decoyed  the  Government  into 
what  he  himself  now  confessed  to  be  a  Slough  of 
Despond,  was  described  by  the  King,  with  pardonable 
impatience,  as  "the  most  absurd  course  that  could  pos- 
sibly be  suggested."  But  whatever  might  be  the  quarter 
whence  it  emanated,  the  advice  came  on  the  top  of  tid- 
ings which  foretokened  that  a  river  of  blood  would  be 
set  flowing  unless  it  was  acted  upon  without  delay. 
The  cannon  and  stores  of  the  Massachusetts  Militia 
were  kept  at  and  near  Cambridge.  Gage  now  learned 


AMHERST  AND    GAGE  267 

the  ominous  circumstance  that  the  several  Townships  of 
the  province  had  begun  quietly  to  withdraw  their  share 
of  the  ammunition.  Before  sunrise,  on  the  first  of  Sep- 
tember 1774,  he  despatched  an  expedition  from  Boston 
by  road  and  river,  which  took  possession  of  a  couple  of 
field  pieces  and  two  hundred  and  fifty  kegs  of  powder, 
and  lodged  them  securely  behind  the  ramparts  of  the 
Castle.  The  performance  was  smart,  and  the  most  was 
made  of  it,  not  so  much  by  the  vanity  of  the  author  as 
by  the  apprehensions  of  those  against  whom  it  had 
been  projected.  The  truth  was  spread  all  over  Middle- 
sex County  in  a  few  hours.  It  ran  through  the  New 
England  colonies  with  the  speed  and  the  growing  di- 
mensions of  a  rumour ;  and,  by  the  time  it  got  to  New 
York  and  Philadelphia,  good  patriots  professed  to  know 
for  certain  that  a  British  man-of-war  had  fired  on  the 
people  and  had  killed  six  of  them  at  the  first  shot.  In 
some  such  shape  the  news  reached  London ;  and  all 
the  friends,  and  all  the  foes,  of  America  believed  that 
Gage  had  made  good  his  boasts  and  his  promises,  and 
that  the  colonists,  at  the  first  glint  of  a  bayonet,  had 
indeed  proved  themselves  such  as  Rigby  and  Sandwich 
had  represented  them. 

Charles  Fox  expressed  his  thoughts  to  Edmund 
Burke  in  a  letter  which  has  been  quoted  ere  now  in 
condemnation  of  them  both,  but  which  proves  nothing 
worse  than  that  the  patriotism  of  the  two  statesmen 
embraced  their  fellow-countrymen  on  both  sides  of  the 
Atlantic.  "  Though  your  opinions,"  Fox  wrote,  "  have 
turned  out  to  be  but  too  true,  I  am  sure  you  will  be  far 
enough  from  triumphing  in  your  foresight.  What  a 
melancholy  consideration  for  all  thinking  men  that  no 
people,  animated  by  what  principle  soever,  can  make  a 
successful  resistance  to  military  discipline  !  I  do  not 
know  that  I  was  ever  so  affected  with  any  public  event, 
either  in  history  or  life.  The  introduction  of  great 
standing  armies  into  Europe  has  then  made  all  mankind 
irrevocably  slaves !  "  The  consideration  which  most 
depressed  him  was  "  the  sad  figure  which  men  made 


268  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

against  soldiers."  Fox's  remarks,  however,  were  based 
on  a  curious  and  total  misapprehension  of  the  facts.  As 
fast  as  the  report  of  the  seizure  of  the  powder  travelled 
up  and  down  the  coast,  and  among  the  inland  villages, 
the  neighbours  flocked  to  each  centre  of  resort,  and  re- 
mained together  throughout  the  night.  Next  morning 
many  thousand  people  converged  on  Cambridge.  They 
arrived  with  staves  and  without  fire-arms ;  as  citizens, 
and  not  as  militia  ;  under  the  command  of  a  Selectman 
of  their  Township,  or  a  member  of  their  Committee  of 
Correspondence.  The  General  had  taken  a  step  imply- 
ing war  ;  and  they,  as  civilians,  had  come  for  the  grave 
purpose  of  doing  that  which  meant  revolution.  Oliver, 
the  Lieutenant-Governor  of  the  province,  who  resided  at 
Cambridge,  had  gone  into  Boston  for  the  purpose  of 
entreating  Gage  to  keep  his  troops  within  their  barracks. 
The  distance  to  and  fro  between  the  two  towns  was  only 
what  a  sophomore  of  Harvard  College  would  cover  for 
his  daily  exercise  between  lecture  and  chapel;  but 
Oliver  who  knew  his  countrymen  as  one  who  feared 
them,  and  Joseph  Warren  as  one  who  loved  and  led 
them,  were  agreed  in  their  opinion  that,  if  a  detachment 
marched,  it  would  never  find  its  way  back  to  Boston. 

It  was  Oliver  whom  the  people  sought,  and  they 
waited  with  full  knowledge  of  the  purpose  for  which 
they  wanted  him.  They  kept  their  hand  in,  during  his 
absence,  by  taking  pledges  of  renunciation  of  office  from 
a  High  Sheriff  and  two  Mandamus  Councillors.  When 
the  Lieutenant-Governor  came  back,  with  what  he  in- 
tended to  be  the  welcome  announcement  that  no  armed 
force  was  on  the  road  from  Boston,  they  requested  him 
formally  to  resign  his  post ;  and  after  some  gasconad- 
ing on  his  part,  which  they  endured  very  stolidly,  he 
acceded  to  their  desire.  Then,  standing  closely  packed 
beneath  the  rays  of  the  hottest  sun  which  had  shone 
during  that  summer,  they  began  like  true  Americans  to 
pass  Resolutions ;  acknowledging  that  Gage,  when  he 
removed  the  powder,  had  not  violated  the  constitution  ; 
and  voting  unanimously  their  abhorrence  of  mobs  and 


AM H ERST  AND    GAGE  269 

riots,  and  of  the  destruction  of  private  property.  The 
British  General,  in  anxious  self-defence,  wrote  to  the 
Ministry  at  home  that  they  were  no  town  rabble,  but 
the  freeholders  and  farmers  of  the  county.  Guided  by 
their  own  good  sense,  and  by  the  advisers  on  whom 
they  had  been  accustomed  to  rely  in  the  ordinary  trans- 
action of  civil  business,  they  exhibited  a  firmness  com- 
bined with  moderation  which  reassured  those  who,  with 
Charles  Fox,  expected  little  from  the  behaviour  of  men 
when  placed  in  opposition  to  soldiers.  Soldiers,  how- 
ever, within  a  few  days,  and  not  many  hours,  they 
might  have  had  in  abundance;  for  the  contingents 
from  the  more  distant  regions,  where  the  alarm  was 
greater,  and  the  exasperation  not  less,  came  armed  and 
in  martial  array.  Israel  Putnam,  his  deeper  feelings 
touched  to  the  quick  by  the  loss  of  the  material  for  so 
many  good  cartridges,  took  upon  himself  to  call  out  the 
militia  of  Connecticut,  and  sent  the  fiery  cross  far  and 
wide  over  the  continent.  Twenty  thousand  musketeers 
were  already  on  foot,  with  their  faces  towards  the  mouth 
of  the  Charles  River,  when  they  were  turned  back  by 
expresses  from  Boston  bearing  the  intelligence  that,  for 
the  present,  everything  was  well  over.  Putnam,  proud 
of  the  result,  if  only  half  pleased  at  the  ease  with  which 
it  had  been  attained,  replied  by  an  assurance  that,  but 
for  the  counter  orders,  double  the  force  would  have  been 
on  the  move  in  another  twenty-four  hours ;  and  he  took 
the  opportunity  of  giving  the  people  of  Massachusetts 
an  admonition,  (the  more  mundane  part  of  which  he 
evidently  thought  that  they  needed,)  to  put  their  trust 
in  God,  and  mind  to  keep  their  powder  safe.1 

The  Boston  patriots  were  never  again  caught  nap- 
ping ;  and  they  very  soon  commenced  a  system  of  re- 
prisals, or  rather  of  depredations  on  their  own  property, 
which  kept  both  the  garrison  and  the  squadron  awake. 
One  night,  within  hearing  of  the  nearest  man-of-war,  if 

1 "  We  much  desire  you  to  keep  a  strict  guard  over  the  remainder  of 
your  powder;  for  that  must  be  the  great  means,  under  God,  of  the  salva- 
tion of  our  country." 


2/O  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

only  the  officer  of  the  watch  had  known  what  they  were 
about,  they  withdrew  the  cannon  from  a  battery  at 
Charlestown,  which  commanded  the  entrance  of  the 
inner  harbour.  Another  night  they  removed  four  pieces 
which  were  stored  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the  Com- 
mon. Their  audacity  and  ubiquity  were  so  bewildering 
that  Admiral  Graves,  who  now  was  conducting  the 
blockade,  could  think  of  no  better  expedient  than  that 
of  spiking  the  guns  which,  from  the  North  point  of  the 
city,  bore  upon  the  roadstead  where  his  ships  were  ly- 
ing. At  other  seaports,  to  which  the  Royal  navy  was 
only  an  occasional  visitor,  the  inhabitants  were  still 
more  free  to  act ;  and  in  laying  hands  on  what  belonged 
to  their  colony  they  felt  that  they  had  on  their  side  the 
moral  law,  or  at  any  rate  as  much  of  it  as  sufficed  for 
their  simple  needs.  At  Portsmouth,  in  New  Hampshire, 
the  Sons  of  Liberty  entered  the  fort  in  broad  daylight, 
to  the  sound  of  music ;  and,  disregarding  the  remon- 
strances of  half  a  dozen  invalids  who  were  quartered  in 
the  precincts,  they  carried  off  sixteen  cannon,  and  a 
hundred  barrels  of  powder  with  which  to  load  them. 

Outside  the  glacis  of  the  earthworks,  which  General 
Gage  in  hot  haste  was  now  constructing  across  Boston 
Neck,  British  rule  was  dead.  The  condition  of  New 
England  then,  and  throughout  the  winter,  has  no  par- 
allel in  history.  Elsewhere  provinces  and  nations,  while 
in  open  and  declared  revolt  against  their  former  rulers, 
have  been  under  the  control  of  an  organised  and  estab- 
lished government  of  their  own.  But  by  the  end  of  the 
year  1774,  throughout  the  Northern  Colonies,  the  old 
machinery  of  administration  had  ceased  to  work,  and  it 
had  not  been  replaced  by  new.  Elsewhere,  as  in  pro- 
vincial France  after  the  fall  of  the  Bastile,  and  in  rural 
Ireland  more  than  once  in  the  course  of  more  than  one 
century,  the  written  law  lost  its  terrors,  and  was  not 
obeyed.  But  in  New  England,  though  the  tribunals 
were  void  and  silent,  crime  was  repressed  and  private 
rights  were  secure,  because  the  people  were  a  law  to 


THE  MASSACHUSETTS   CONGRESS  2/1 

themselves.  It  was  as  if  in  a  quiet  English  county 
there  were  no  assizes,  no  quarter  and  petty  sessions, 
and  no  official  personage  above  the  rank  of  a  parish 
overseer.  The  Selectmen  of  the  townships  were  the 
most  exalted  functionaries  who  continued  to  perform 
their  duties ;  power  rested  in  each  locality  with  the 
Committees  of  Correspondence ;  and  the  central  author- 
ity was  the  revolutionary  Convention,  or,  (as  it  called  it- 
self,) the  Congress,  of  the  colony. 

In  Massachusetts  that  Congress  had  even  less  than  a 
legal  title ;  for  it  sate,  deliberated,  and  even  existed  in 
defiance  of  the  Constitution.  Gage  had  appointed  the 
Assembly  to  meet  at  Salem  at  the  commencement  of 
October ;  but  before  that  date  arrived  he  thought  better 
of  it,  and  issued  a  proclamation  declining  to  be  present 
as  Governor,  and  discharging  the  elected  representa- 
tives from  the  obligation  of  attendance.  The  document 
was  unusual  in  form,  but  perfectly  clear  in  meaning. 
If  the  members  of  the  Assembly  took  the  course  en- 
joined upon  them,  all  hope  of  continuing  the  struggle 
was  over,  and  they  would  have  nothing  to  do  except  to 
sit  by  their  firesides,  with  hands  folded,  till  their  fate 
overtook  them.  True  indeed  it  was  that  the  Congress 
of  all  the  provinces  was  still  in  session  at  the  capital  of 
Pennsylvania ;  but  the  popular  leaders  of  Massachusetts 
would  look  in  vain  to  that  quarter  for  protection.  It 
was  a  far  cry  to  Philadelphia,  and  the  danger  was 
knocking  at  their  own  door.  The  Continental  Congress 
was  nothing  more  than  an  aggregation  of  delegates, 
provided  only  with  general  instructions,  of  varying  ful- 
ness and  tenor,  from  the  colonies  by  which  they  were 
severally  commissioned.  Those  delegates,  in  their  cor- 
porate capacity,  were  not  inclined  to  usurp  executive 
functions ;  and  they  did  not  as  yet  think  fit  to  go  be- 
yond the  stage  of  presenting  to  the  world,  in  a  precise 
and  forcible  shape,  the  case  against  the  British  Govern- 
ment. To  make  good  that  case  by  arms,  —  and  to  arms 
it  was  plain  that  the  decision  must  speedily  come,  —  it 
was  essential  that  there  should  be  an  authority  fur- 


2/2  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

nished  with  powers  which,  whether  constitutional  or 
not,  were  recognised  and  respected  by  the  people  in 
whose  name  they  were  exercised ;  an  authority  planted 
on  the  scene  of  action,  and  inspired  by  that  sort  of  una- 
nimity and  energy  which  actuates  men  who  know  that, 
if  they  do  not  pursue  their  forward  march  together  and 
to  the  end,  they  have  already  gone  much  too  far  for 
their  personal  safety. 

The  Massachusetts  Assembly  met.  After  waiting 
two  days  for  the  Governor  who  never  came,  the  mem- 
bers constituted  themselves  into  a  Congress  and  ad- 
journed from  Salem  to  the  more  remote  and  inaccessible 
retreat  of  Concord.  Hebrew  or  English,  the  names  of 
the  two  places  had  little  in  common  with  the  mood  in 
which  these  men  set  forth  upon  their  up-country  jour- 
ney.1 True  to  their  national  origin,  they  took  some 
pains  to  define  their  constitutional  position,  and  to  de- 
fend it  by  adducing  precedents  and  quoting  charters. 
But  they  had  attention  to  spare  for  more  pressing  busi- 
ness. They  commenced  by  ordering  "that  all  the 
matters  that  come  before  the  Congress  be  kept  secret, 
and  not  be  disclosed  to  any  but  the  members  thereof 
until  further  order  of  this  body."  Then,  on  the  twenty- 
fourth  of  October,  they  appointed  a  Committee  to  con- 
sider the  proper  time  for  laying  in  warlike  stores ;  and 
on  the  same  day  the  Committee  reported  that  the 
proper  time  was  now.  And  therefore  without  delay 
they  voted  the  purchase  of  twenty  field  pieces  and  four 
mortars ;  twenty  tons  of  grape  and  round-shot ;  five 
thousand  muskets  and  bayonets,  and  seventy-five  thou- 
sand flints.  They  made  an  agreement  to  pay  no  more 
taxes  into  the  royal  Treasury.  They  arranged  a  system 
of  assessment  for  the  purposes  of  provincial  defence, 
and  made  a  first  appropriation  of  ninety  thousand  dol- 
lars. They  then  proceeded  to  elect  by  ballot  three  gen- 
erals. They  appointed  a  Committee  of  Public  Safety, 
of  which  John  Hancock  was  the  most  notable,  and 
Joseph  Warren  the  most  active,  member.  They  in- 
1  "Being  King  of  Salem,  which  is,  King  of  Peace."  —  Hebrews  vii.  2. 


THE  MASSACHUSETTS   CONGRESS  273 

vested  that  Committee  with  authority  to  call  out  the 
militia,  every  fourth  man  of  whom  was  expected  to  hold 
himself  ready  to  march  at  a  minute's  notice;  a  con- 
dition of  service  that  suggested  the  name  of  Minute-men 
by  which  the  earlier  soldiers  of  the  Revolution  were 
called.  And,  having  done  the  best  they  knew,  they 
adjourned  until  the  fourth  Wednesday  in  November;  by 
which  time  the  Committee  of  Public  Safety,  disbursing 
their  funds  thriftily,  had  bought,  in  addition  to  the  pre- 
scribed amount  of  ordnance,  three  hundred  and  fifty 
spades  and  pickaxes,  a  thousand  wooden  mess-bowls, 
and  some  pease  and  flour.  That  was  their  stock  of 
material  wherewith  to  fight  the  empire  which  recently, 
with  hardly  any  sense  of  distress,  had  maintained  a  long 
war  against  France  and  Spain,  and  had  left  them 
humbled  and  half  ruined  at  the  end  of  it. 

Whether  on  a  large  or  small  scale,  the  irrevocable 
step  was  taken.  The  Massachusetts  congressmen  were 
fully  aware  that,  with  the  first  dollar  which  passed  into 
the  coffers  of  their  own  Receiver-General,  the  game  of 
armed  resistance  had  begun,  and  nothing  remained 
except  to  play  it  out.  Men  in  power  had  called  them 
rebels  rudely  and  prematurely ;  and  rebels  they  now 
were  in  fierce  earnest.  In  a  series  of  Resolutions  every 
one  of  which  the  most  indulgent  Attorney-General, 
without  thinking  twice  about  it,  would  pronounce  to  be 
flat  treason,  they  gave  consistence  and  direction  to  the 
seething  excitement  of  the  province.  They  recommended 
to  the  inhabitants  of  the  several  towns  and  districts  that 
any  person  who  supplied  intrenching  tools,  boards  for 
gun  platforms,  or  draught  oxen  and  horses,  to  the  troops 
in  Boston,  ought  to  be  deemed  an  inveterate  enemy  to 
America  and  held  in  the  highest  detestation.  The 
methods  of  expressing  that  detestation  they  left,  as 
they  safely  might,  to  local  effort  and  initiative ;  for  ten 
years  of  almost  unintermittent  agitation  had  perfected 
New  Englanders  in  the  science  of  making  themselves 
unpleasant  to  those  whom  they  regarded  as  bad  friends 
of  the  cause.  They  most  solemnly  exhorted  "the 

VOL.  I.  T 


274  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

Militia  in  general,  as  well  as  the  detached  part  of  it 
in  Minute-men,  in  obedience  to  the  great  law  of  self- 
preservation,"  to  spare  neither  trouble  nor  expense  over 
the  task  of  perfecting  themselves  in  their  exercises ; 
and  in  April  1775,  taking  more  upon  them  as  time 
went  on  and  perils  thickened,  they  framed  and  issued 
a  paper  of  Rules  and  Regulations  for  the  Massachusetts 
army.  They  were  not  afraid  to  notify  that  whatever 
officer  or  soldier  shamefully  abandoned  a  post  committed 
to  his  charge,  or  induced  others  to  do  the  like  when 
under  fire,  should  suffer  death  immediately.  Nor  were 
they  ashamed  to  lay  down  what,  according  to  the  tradi- 
tion of  their  colony,  was  the  right  preparation  for  that 
frame  of  mind  in  which  homely  and  half-trained  men 
may  best  meet  the  stress  of  danger.  All  officers  and 
soldiers  who,  not  having  just  impediment,  failed  dili- 
gently to  frequent  divine  service  and  to  behave  decently 
and  reverently  when  present  at  it,  were  to  be  fined  for 
the  benefit  of  sick  poor  comrades ;  and  the  same  penalty 
was  imposed  upon  any  who  were  guilty  of  profane 
cursing  and  swearing. 

Their  statement  of  the  circumstances,  on  which  they 
grounded  the  necessity  for  tightening  the  bonds  of 
military  discipline,  differed  widely  from  the  preamble 
of  the  Mutiny  Act  which  annually  was  placed  oh  the 
Statute-Book  at  Westminster.  That  statement  consisted 
in  an  outspoken  vindication  of  religious  and  political  con- 
victions, ennobled  and  elevated  by  the  pride  of  ancestry. 
"Whereas  the  lust  of  power,"  such  was  the  wording  of 
the  recital,  "which  of  old  persecuted  and  exiled  our 
pious  and  virtuous  ancestors  from  their  fair  possessions 
in  Britain,  now  pursues  with  tenfold  severity  their 
guiltless  children;  and  being  deeply  impressed  with  a 
sense  of  the  almost  incredible  fatigues  and  hardships 
our  venerable  progenitors  encountered,  who  fled  from 
oppression  for  the  sake  of  civil  and  religious  liberty  for 
themselves  and  their  offspring;  and  having  seriously 
considered  the  duty  we  owe  to  God,  to  the  memory  of 
such  invincible  worthies,  to  the  King,  to  Great  Britain, 


THE  MASSACHUSETTS   CONGRESS  2?$ 

our  country,  ourselves,  and  our  posterity,  we  do  think 
it  our  indispensable  duty  to  recover,  maintain,  defend, 
and  preserve  the  free  exercise  of  all  those  rights  and 
liberties  for  which  many  of  our  forefathers  bled  and 
died.  And  whereas  we  are  frequently  told  by  the 
tools  of  the  Administration  that  Great  Britain  will  not 
relax  in  her  measures  until  we  acknowledge  her  right 
of  making  laws  binding  upon  us  in  all  cases  whatever, 
and  that  if  we  persist  in  our  denial  of  her  claim  the 
dispute  must  be  decided  by  arms,  in  which  it  is  said 
we  shall  have  no  chance,  being  undisciplined,  cowards, 
disobedient,  impatient  of  control ;  "  —  and  so  the  pas- 
sage continued  to  run  in  phrases  clearly  showing  that 
its  authors  had  got  hold  of  some  sentences  which  Eng- 
lish ministers  had  recently  spoken  in  Parliament,  and 
were  putting  their  discovery  to  a  telling,  but  quite 
legitimate,  use. 

Having  invested  themselves  with  the  responsibility 
of  dictating  the  policy  of  the  colony,  and  of  equipping 
it  for  self-defence,  the  representatives  of  Massachusetts 
remained  together  either  at  Cambridge  or  dt  Concord, 
(as  the  chance  of  interruption  by  the  armed  hand  of 
authority  was  less  or  more  present  to  their  minds,) 
through  the  rigours  of  a  New  England  winter.  In  con- 
sideration of  the  coldness  of  the  season,  and  that  the 
Congress  met  in  a  room  without  a  fire,  it  was  resolved 
that  the  members  who  inclined  thereto  might  keep  on 
their  hats.  Resembling  in  that  respect,  but  in  few 
others,  the  British  House  of  Commons,  they  sate  almost 
continuously ;  although  they  adjourned  for  some  days 
in  order  to  observe  a  Thanksgiving  appointed  in  ac- 
knowledgement of  the  special  protection  which  Heaven 
had  extended  to  the  colony  of  Massachusetts.  Deter- 
mined to  be  thankful,  they  detected  a  mark  of  Divine 
favour  in  the  unanimity  with  which  their  province  had 
faced  the  crisis.  By  their  fervent  recognition  of  a 
blessing  that,  after  all,  was  mainly  due  to  themselves, 
they  gave  Providence,  on  the  eve  of  a  doubtful  war,  a 
significant  indication  of  the  gratitude  which  they  were 

T2 


2/6  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

prepared  to  feel  for  such  greater  mercies  as  it  might 
have  in  store  for  them. 

These  proceedings,  whatever  figure  they  might  event- 
ually make  in  history,  were  not  of  a  nature  to  be  con- 
templated with  equanimity  by  the  British  garrison. 
Our  troops  had  hitherto  behaved,  on  the  whole,  quite  as 
well  as  could  be  expected  from  men  who  were  planted 
down  in  such  a  place  for  such  a  purpose ;  but,  by  the 
time  the  winter  was  over,  their  patience  had  reached 
its  limit.  In  the  first  week  of  March  the  townspeople 
assembled  to  hear  the  annual  address  in  celebration  of 
the  event  which  was  popularly  known  as  the  Boston 
Massacre.  The  scene  has  been  described  by  an  eye- 
witness, whose  point  of  view  is  not  disguised  by  his 
narrative.  "The  military  were  determined  not  to  suffer 
the  least  expression  that  had  a  tendency  to  reflect  on 
the  King,  or  Royal  Family,  to  pass  with  impunity. 
In  the  pulpit  were  Warren,  the  orator  of  the  day, 
Hancock,  Adams,1  Church,  and  others.  Some  of  the 
gentlemen  of  the  Army  had  placed  themselves  on  the 
top  of  the  pulpit  stairs.  Officers  frequently  interrupted 
Warren  by  laughing  loudly  at  the  most  ludicrous  parts, 
and  coughing  and  hemming  at  the  most  seditious,  to  the 
great  discontent  of  the  devoted  citizens.  The  oration 
however  was  finished,  and  it  was  moved  by  Adams 
that  an  orator  should  be  named  for  the  ensuing  fifth 
of  March,  to  commemorate  the  bloody  and  horrid  mas- 
sacre perpetrated  by  a  party  of  soldiers  under  the  com- 
mand of  Captain  Preston.  At  this  the  officers  could 

1  This  was  Samuel  Adams.  John  Adams  in  a  former  year  declined  to 
take  the  principal  part  in  the  ceremony,  on  the  ground  that  he  had  acted 
as  Captain  Preston's  advocate.  "  Though  the  subject  of  the  Oration,"  he 
said,  "  was  compatible  with  the  verdict  of  the  Jury,  and  indeed  even  with 
the  absolute  innocence  of  the  soldiers,  yet  I  found  the  world  in  general 
were  not  capable,  or  not  willing,  to  make  the  distinction;  and  therefore  I 
should  only  expose  myself  to  the  lash  of  ignorant  and  malicious  tongues 
on  both  sides  of  the  question."  In  1774  he  attended  the  meeting,  and 
heard  with  admiration  John  Hancock,  who  might  be  trusted  not  to  fall 
below  the  topmost  altitude  of  the  occasion;  and  he  would  certainly  have 
agreed  with  every  syllable  which  in  1775  came  from  the  lips  of  Warren. 


HOSTILITIES  BECOME  IMMINENT  277 

no  longer  contain  themselves,  but  called  '  Fie !  Shame ! ' 
and  '  Fie !  Shame ! '  was  echoed  by  all  the  Navy  and 
Military  in  the  place.  This  caused  a  violent  confusion ; 
and  in  an  instant  the  windows  were  thrown  open  and 
the  affrighted  Yankees  jumped  out  by  fifties." 

The  ludicrous  parts  of  Warren's  speech  were,  it  may 
be  presumed,  his  references  to  the  Bible ;  and  the 
promise,  (which  he  kept,)  to  give  his  life  in  case  his  life 
was  wanted.  And,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  they  were  women 
who  escaped  by  the  windows.1  In  the  spring  of  1775 
it  took  something  more  than  a  loud  noise  to  make  New 
England  men  leave  a  spot  where  their  duty  called  on 
them  to  stay.  The  commotion  grew  from  bad  to  worse 
until  an  officer,  "  dressed  in  gold  lace  regimentals,  with 
blue  lapels,"  thought  fit  to  put  a  gross  affront  upon  the 
Chairman  of  the  meeting.  In  the  course  of  the  next 
fortnight  the  army  broke  loose  from  restraint,  or  rather 
from  self-restraint ;  for  those  who  ought  to  have  kept 
others  in  order  were  the  prime  actors  in  every  succes- 
sive manifestation  of  partisanship.  The  day  of  prayer 
and  fasting  ordained  by  Congress  for  the  whole  colony 
was  observed  with  marked  solemnity  by  the  townsmen 
of  Boston.  On  that  day  the  members  of  a  corps,  which 
was  bent  on  deserving  its  title  of  The  King's  Own, 
pitched  two  "  marquee  tents  "  within  ten  yards  of  the 
church  at  the  West  End  of  the  city,  and  played  their 
drums  and  fifes  as  long  as  the  service  lasted,  while  their 
Colonel  looked  approvingly  on.  Real  or  reputed  patriots 
of  all  grades  in  society  became  the  objects  of  insult  and, 
where  a  plausible  excuse  could  be  found,  of  personal 
violence.  A  party  of  officers  broke  Hancock's  windows, 
and  hacked  the  railing  of  his  lawn  with  their  swords. 
A  country  fellow  who,  as  his  friends  asserted,  had  been 
entrapped  into  buying  a  gun  from  a  soldier,  was  tarred 
and  feathered  in  the  guardhouse  of  the  regiment  and 
paraded  about  the  streets  on  a  truck,  escorted  by  a  crowd 
of  all  ranks  from  the  commanding  officer  downwards, 
and  preceded  by  a  band  playing  "  Yankee  Doodle." 

1  American  Archives;  March  8,  1775. 


278  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

Those  strains  were  not  agreeable  hearing  for  the 
crowd  before  whose  pinched  and  anxious  faces  the  pro- 
cession passed.  In  and  about  the  town  there  was 
plenty  of  employment  to  be  had  which  would  have  kept 
Boston  children  plump,  and  Boston  cottages  warm  and 
garnished ;  but  for  six  months  past  all  the  mechanics 
had  struck  work  on  the  Barracks,  and  the  roughest 
labourer  refused  to  turn  a  sod  at  the  fortifications. 
They  hung  outside  the  shops  where  bricklayers  and 
carpenters,  fetched  from  Nova  Scotia,  or,  (a  reflection 
more  bitter  still,)  even  from  New  York,  were  freely 
spending  the  excellent  wages  which  in  such  a  strait  the 
Government  was  only  too  glad  to  pay.  They  stood  in 
line  at  the  doors  of  the  Donation  Committee,  waiting 
for  their  allowance  of  meal,  and  rice,  and  salt  fish,  the 
further  supply  of  which  was  at  that  very  moment  in  the 
act  of  being  cut  off  by  the  legislation  of  the  British 
Parliament.  They  took  their  turn  of  labour  on  munici- 
pal industries  extemporised  under  the  superintendence 
of  the  Selectmen,  and  paid  for  out  of  the  savings  of 
that  middle-class  which,  as  the  artisans  had  the  good 
sense  to  foresee  and  the  neighbourly  feeling  to  regret, 
would  soon  be  as  poor  as  themselves. 

It  was  a  cheerless  season ;  but  for  those  who  looked 
in  the  right  quarter  there  still  were  smiling  visages  to 
be  seen.  "My  spirits  were  very  good,"  a  lady  said, 
"  until  one  Saturday  riding  into  town  I  found  the  Neck 
beset  with  soldiers ;  the  cannon  hoisted ;  and  many 
Tories  on  the  Neck,  and  many  more  going  up  to  see 
the  encampment  with  the  greatest  pleasure  in  their 
countenances,  which  gave  a  damp  that  I  had  not  before 
felt."  The  inner  thoughts  of  these  people  may  be  read 
in  a  letter  from  Dr.  Samuel  Peters,  of  Hebron  in  Con- 
necticut. That  divine  had  taken  sanctuary  in  Boston 
after  having  been  rabbled  at  home  by  fellow-townsmen 
whom  he  had  sorely  provoked,  if  any  provocation  could 
excuse  outrage.  "  I  am  in  high  spirits,"  he  wrote. 
"  Six  regiments  are  now  coming  from  England,  and 
sundry  men-of-war.  So  soon  as  they  come,  hanging 


HOSTILITIES  BECOME  IMMINENT  2/9 

work  will  go  on,  and  destruction  will  first  attend  the 
seaport  towns.  The  lintel  sprinkled  on  the  side-posts 
will  preserve  the  faithful."  Years  afterwards,  when 
Peters  had  long  been  resident  in  England,  his  old 
parishioners  learned  with  interest  that  the  style  of 
preaching  which  had  given  displeasure  at  Hebron  was 
too  strong  meat  even  for  a  congregation  of  Londoners. 
A  brother  exile,  who  heard  Peters  deliver  a  sermon  in 
an  English  metropolitan  pulpit,  said  that  "  it  was  hard 
to  conceive  how  he  got  there."  l 

On  week-days,  when  the  Episcopal  churches  were 
closed,  the  Boston  Tories  could  draw  comfort  from  the 
periodical  effusions  of  a  vigorous  writer,  the  style  of 
whose  prophecies  and  invectives  proved  that  neither 
side  in  the  great  American  controversy  had  a  monopoly 
of  grandiloquence.  According  to  "  Massachusettensis," 
the  Boston  Committee  of  Correspondence  was  the  foulest, 
subtlest,  and  most  venomous  thing  that  had  ever  issued 
from  the  eggs  of  the  serpent  of  sedition ;  —  a  knot  of 
demagogues,  who  did  for  their  dupes  no  more  solid 
service  than  that  of  inducing  them  to  swallow  a  chimera 
for  breakfast.  The  point  of  the  observation  was  all  the 
sharper  at  a  time  when  the  families  of  citizens,  who 
followed  Hancock  and  Warren,  were  in  a  fair  way  to 
have  very  little  indeed  that  was  more  substantial  for 
breakfast,  dinner,  or  supper  either.  Such  was  the  con- 
dition of  mutual  charity  and  good-will  to  which  George 
the  Third  had  reduced  the  inhabitants  of  a  colony  into 
whose  local  elections,  at  a  date  so  recent  as  ten  years 
before,  the  element  of  political  partisanship  had  not 
as  yet  entered.  1766  was  the  first  year  in  which  the 
Selectmen  of  even  so  considerable  a  place  as  Braintree 
were  chosen  for  their  politics.  The  waters  of  strife  had 
then  been  first  stirred  by  a  violent  Tory  sermon ;  and  on 
the  next  Sunday  a  Whig  clergyman  replied  by  preach- 
ing from  the  text,  "  Render  unto  Caesar  the  things  that 
are  Caesar's  " ;  from  which  things  he  specially  excepted 
the  price  of  stamps  bearing  Caesar's  head. 

1  Sabine's  Loyalists;  vol.  ii. 


280  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

The  royalists  in  Boston,  as  they  watched  the  reviews 
on  the  Common,  and  listened  to  the  professional  opin- 
ions which  were  freely  delivered  around  them,  never 
doubted  of  a  rapid  and  triumphant  issue.  Reinforce- 
ments continued  to  arrive  from  England,  and  a  large 
body  of  marines  was  landed  from  the  squadron.  By  the 
end  of  the  year  there  were  eleven  battalions  in  garri- 
son ;  weak,  for  the  most  part,  in  numbers ;  but  well 
housed,  splendidly  equipped,  and  brimming  over  with 
confidence.  The  British  officers  set  a  high  value  on  the 
fighting  quality  of  their  own  men,  which  indeed  it  was 
not  easy  to  overrate.  But  the  estimation  in  which  they 
held  the  colonists  was  not  creditable  to  their  habits  of 
observation  or  to  their  knowledge  of  military  history, 
and  said  very  little  indeed  for  the  worth  of  oral  military 
tradition.  "  As  to  what  you  hear  of  their  taking  arms, 
it  is  mere  bullying,  and  will  go  no  further  than  words. 
Whenever  it  comes  to  blows,  he  that  can  run  fastest 
will  think  himself  best  off.  Any  two  regiments  here 
ought  to  be  decimated  if  they  did  not  beat  in  the  field 
the  whole  force  of  the  Massachusetts  province ;  for 
though  they  are  numerous,  they  are  but  a  mere  mob 
without  order  or  discipline,  and  very  awkward  in  han- 
dling their  arms." 

That  was  the  view  of  the  regimental  officers,  who 
were  unaware  of  the  fact  that  colonists,  so  far  from 
being  awkward  with  their  weapons,  were  as  a  rule 
marksmen  before  they  became  soldiers.  The  familiar 
conversation  of  the  staff,  which  ought  to  have  been 
better  informed,  was  in  the  same  strain.  The  Quarter- 
master-General wrote  home  that  Congress  had  appointed 
three  scoundrels  to  command  the  militia.  It  was  the 
very  reverse  of  the  real  case.  The  first  commanders 
of  the  American  forces  had  indeed,  as  always  happens 
at  the  commencement  of  a  civil  war,  the  defects  of 
leaders  chosen  on  account  of  exploits  performed  many 
years  before;  but  they  were  of  blameless,  and  even 
rigid,  character.  In  the  days  of  their  early  renown, 
they  had  gone  forth  against  the  power  of  France  in 


HOSTILITIES   BECOME  IMMINENT  28 1 

the  stern  conviction  that  they  themselves  were  the 
champions  of  Protestantism.  Seth  Pomeroy,  a  good 
man,  but  no  better  than  his  colleagues,  had  seen  the 
hardest  service  of  the  three.  In  September  1755  he  was 
colonel  of  a  Massachusetts  regiment  at  the  action  of 
Lake  George,  fought  by  a  colonial  officer  at  the  head 
of  sixteen  or  seventeen  hundred  rustics,  very  few  of 
whom  had  been  under  fire  before,  against  an  army 
largely  composed  of  regulars.  The  general  of  the 
French,  in  the  lightness  of  his  heart,  encouraged  his 
soldiers  with  the  assurance  that  American  Militiamen 
were  the  worst  troops  on  the  face  of  the  earth.  After 
the  battle,  a  prisoner  with  three  bullets  in  him,  he  pro- 
nounced that  in  the  morning  the  New  Englanders  had 
fought  like  good  boys,  at  noon  like  men,  and  in  the 
afternoon  like  devils ;  and  at  all  times  of  the  day  their 
aim  was  such  that  their  adversaries  "dropped  like 
pigeons."  Pomeroy,  who  was  employed  to  bury  the 
slain,  took  measures  to  preserve  the  French  dead  from 
the  indignities  of  the  Indian  scalping-knife.  He  had 
lost  a  brother  in  the  battle.  "  Dear  Sister,"  he  wrote, 
"  this  brings  heavy  tidings :  but  let  not  your  heart  sink 
at  the  news,  though  it  be  your  loss  of  a  dear  husband. 
Monday  was  a  memorable  day ;  and  truly  you  may  say, 
had  not  the  Lord  been  on  our  side,  we  must  all  have 
been  swallowed  up."  It  was  not  the  letter  of  a  scoun- 
drel.1 But  the  deeds  of  the  colonists  in  former  battles, 
though  well  remembered  in  Paris,  were  forgotten  at 
British  mess-tables.  In  all  ranks  of  our  army  there 
unhappily  prevailed  that  contempt  of  the  enemy  before 
the  event  which  is  the  only  bad  omen  in  war  ;  —  quite 
another  sentiment  from  the  invaluable  consciousness  of 
superiority  arising  from  the  experience  of  victory. 

The  latest  comers  had  some  excuse  for  their  ignorance 
of  the  country ;  for  between  them  and  the  outer  world 
an  impenetrable  veil  was  spread.  Inside  Boston  there 
was  little  to  be  learned.  Whenever  a  scarlet  coat  was 
in  the  company,  Whigs  kept  their  own  counsel ;  and 

1  Farkman's  Montcalm  and  Wolfe  ;  vol.  i.,  chapter  9. 


282  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

Tories  spoke  only  pleasant  things  which,  human  nature 
being  what  it  was,  they  had  honestly  taught  themselves 
to  believe.  Beyond  the  fortifications,  over  a  breadth  of 
many  score  of  miles,  lay  a  zone  of  peril  and  mystery. 
Officers  could  not  venture  to  leave  the  precincts  of  the 
garrison  unless  they  were  accompanied  by  a  strong  force 
in  military  array  ;  and,  in  the  case  even  of  such  a  force, 
its  reception  depended  upon  the  character  of  its  errand. 
When  the  General  was  contented  to  march  his  people 
out  in  order  to  march  them  back  again, — without  at- 
tempting to  impound  military  stores,  or  arrest  political 
leaders,  —  the  expedition  encountered  nothing  more  for- 
midable than  black  looks  and  closed  shutters.  In  Janu- 
ary 1775  a  party  of  infantry  proceeded  to  Marshfield, 
with  the  object  of  protecting  the  formation  of  a  Loyal 
Militia,  and  took  with  them  fire-arms  in  greater  numbers 
than  there  were  loyalists  in  the  neighbourhood  to  carry 
them.  The  troops  preserved  exact  discipline.  They 
molested  no  one,  and  no  one  molested  them.  As  long 
as  they  stayed  in  the  town,  (so  a  Government  newspaper 
in  New  York  boasted,)  every  faithful  subject  there  re- 
siding dared  freely  to  utter  his  thoughts  and  drink  his 
tea.  But  when  they  left  Marshfield,  and  returned  to 
Boston,  the  Loyal  Militia  disappeared  from  history,  and 
General  Gage  would  have  felt  more  easy  if  he  had  been 
certain  that  their  muskets  had  disappeared  with  them. 

A  month  afterwards  Colonel  Leslie  sailed  to  Marble- 
head,  for  the  purpose  of  seizing  some  artillery  which  the 
provincials  had  deposited  at  Salem  as  a  place  of  com- 
parative security.  He  landed  his  detachment  success- 
fully on  a  Sunday  morning ;  but,  when  the  alarm  reached 
the  nearest  meeting-house,  the  congregation  turned  out 
and  took  up  a  position  upon  some  water  which  barred 
his  route.  They  refused  to  lower  the  draw-bridge,  on  the 
plea  that  there  was  no  public  right  of  way  across  it ; 
and,  when  Leslie  attempted  to  lay  hands  on  a  couple  of 
barges,  the  owners  proceeded  to  scuttle  them.  The  sol- 
diers drew  their  bayonets,  and  inflicted  some  wounds  not 
so  wide  as  the  church-door  from  which  the  patriots  had 


HOSTILITIES  BECOME  IMMINENT  283 

issued,  and  only  just  deep  enough  to  allow  Salem  to  claim 
the  honour  of  the  first  drops  of  blood  which  were  shed  in 
the  Revolution.  A  loyalist  clergyman  intervened.  The 
people  agreed  to  lower  the  bridge,  and  Leslie  pledged 
his  honour  not  to  advance  thirty  rods  beyond  it.  Brave 
to  imprudence  when  duty  as  well  as  danger  lay  clear 
before  him,  he  was  not  prepared,  without  specific  orders 
from  a  high  quarter,  to  light  the  match  which  would  set 
the  thirteen  colonies  in  a  blaze.  He  recalled  his  men, 
and  re-embarked  them  empty-handed  just  as  the  company 
of  minute-men  from  the  next  township,  with  plenty  more 
of  their  like  to  follow,  came  marching  in  to  the  help  of 
Salem. 

A  countryside,  in  this  state  of  effervescence,  presented 
few  attractions  even  to  the  most  adventurous  officers  of 
the  garrison ;  whether  they  were  sportsmen,  or  students 
of  manners,  or  explorers  of  the  picturesque.  But  never- 
theless one  of  their  number  has  left  a  narrative  which 
affords  a  glimpse  of  New  England  in  the  February  of 
r775-  Gage  despatched  a  captain  and  an  ensign  through 
the  counties  of  Suffolk  and  Worcester,  with  a  commission 
to  sketch  the  roads,  to  observe  and  report  upon  the  de- 
files, and  to  obtain  information  about  forage  and  pro- 
visions. They  dressed  themselves  as  countrymen,  in 
"brown  clothes,  and  reddish  handkerchiefs."  Their 
disguise  was  so  far  artistic  that,  on  their  return,  the 
General  and  his  staff  mistook  them  for  what  they  pre- 
tended to  be;  though  during  their  expedition  no  one, 
either  friend  or  foe,  looked  at  them  twice  without  detect- 
ing what  they  were.  They  stopped  at  a  tavern  for  their 
dinner,  which  was  brought  them  by  a  black  woman.  "  At 
first  she  was  very  civil,  but  afterwards  began  to  eye  us 
very  attentively.  We  observed  to  her  that  it  was  a  very 
fine  country,  upon  which  she  answered,  '  So  it  is,  and  we 
have  got  brave  fellows  to  defend  it.' "  Downstairs  she 
told  the  soldier-servant,  who  looked  still  less  of  a  plough- 
man than  his  masters,  that,  if  his  party  went  any  higher 
up,  they  would  meet  with  very  bad  usage.  Towards  the 
close  of  the  day  they  came  to  a  village  where  they  had 


284  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

a  more  hearty,  but  a  not  less  alarming,  welcome.  "  We 
stopped  at  the  sign  of  the  Golden  Ball,  with  the  inten- 
tion to  take  a  drink,  and  so  proceed.  But  the  landlord 
pleased  us  so  much,  as  he  was  not  inquisitive,  that  we 
resolved  to  lie  there  that  night ;  so  we  ordered  some  fire 
to  be  made,  and  to  get  us  some  coffee.  He  told  us  we 
might  have  what  we  pleased,  either  Tea  or  Coffee."  Their 
relief  on  hearing  the  Shibboleth  of  loyalty  was  more 
than  balanced  by  the  reflection  that  this  landlord  was 
not  inquisitive  only  because  he  had  seen  all  he  wanted 
without  needing  to  ask  a  single  question. 

Another  stage  of  their  journey  brought  them  to 
Worcester.  "  The  next  day  being  Sunday  we  could  not 
think  of  travelling,  as  it  was  not  the  custom  of  the  coun- 
try. Nor  dare  we  stir  out  until  the  evening,  because  no- 
body is  allowed  to  walk  the  street  during  divine  service 
without  being  taken  up  and  examined:  so  that  we  thought 
it  prudent  to  stay  at  home,  where  we  wrote  and  corrected 
our  sketches.  On  our  asking  what  the  landlord  could 
give  us  for  breakfast,  he  told  us  Tea  or  anything  else  we 
chose.  That  was  an  open  confession  what  he  was  :  but 
for  fear  he  might  be  imprudent,  we  did  not  tell  him  who 
we  were,  though  we  were  certain  he  knew  it.  At  Shrews- 
bury we  were  overtaken  by  a  horseman  who  examined 
us  very  attentively,  and  especially  me,  whom  he  looked 
at  from  head  to  foot  as  if  he  wanted  to  know  me  again, 
and  then  rode  off  pretty  hard."  They  got  their  meal  at 
an  inn,  and  had  an  opportunity  of  watching  from  the 
window  a  company  of  militia  at  drill.  "  The  commander 
made  a  very  eloquent  speech,  recommending  patience, 
coolness,  and  bravery,  (which  indeed  they  much  wanted  ;) 
quoted  Caesar,  Pompey,  and  Brigadiers  Putnam  and  Ward ; 
recommended  them  to  wait  for  the  English  fire,  and  told 
them  they  would  always  conquer  if  they  did  not  break ; 
put  them  in  mind  of  Cape  Breton,  and  observed  that  the 
Regulars  in  the  last  war  must  have  been  ruined  but  for 
them.  After  a  learned  and  spirited  harangue  he  dis- 
missed the  parade,  and  the  whole  company  drank  until 
nine  o'clock,  and  then  returned  to  their  homes  full  of 


HOSTILITIES  BECOME  IMMINENT  285 

pot- valour."  The  allusion  to  Cape  Breton  showed  that 
the  rank  and  file  of  the  colonial  militia  were  familiar 
with  the  true  history  of  that  first  siege  of  Louisburg 
which  Sandwich  had  so  woefully  garbled  for  the  amuse- 
ment of  the  Peers. 

On  their  way  to  Marlborough  the  two  officers  were 
accosted  by  riders,  who  asked  them  point-blank  whether 
they  were  in  the  army,  and  then  passed  on  towards  the 
town.  They  arrived  after  nightfall,  in  what  now  would 
be  called  a  blizzard ;  but  the  street  was  alive  and  buzz- 
ing. They  were  waylaid  and  interrogated  by  a  baker 
who,  as  they  afterwards  learned,  had  a  deserter  from 
their  own  regiment  harboured  on  his  premises.  They 
had  hardly  entered  the  dwelling  of  Mr.  Barnes,  a  well- 
to-do  loyalist,  when  the  town-doctor,  who  had  not  been 
inside  their  host's  door  for  two  years  past,  invited  him- 
self to  supper  and  fell  to  cross-examining  the  children 
about  their  father's  guests.  They  were  sent  off  again 
into  the  darkness  at  once,  and  not  a  minute  too  soon ; 
for  immediately  after  their  departure  the  Committee  of 
Correspondence  invaded  the  house,  searched  it  from 
garret  to  cellar,  and  told  the  owner  that,  if  they  had 
caught  his  visitors  under  his  roof,  they  would  have 
pulled  it  down  about  his  ears.1  It  was  not  until  the 
travellers  had  completed  a  march  of  two  and  thirty 
miles  through  wind  and  snow  that  they  reached  a 
friendly  refuge,  and  were  comforted  with  a  bottle  of 
mulled  Madeira,  and  a  bed  where  they  could  rest  in 
safety.  Next  morning  they  walked  back  to  Boston, 
having  enjoyed  the  rare  privilege  of  being  in  contact 
with  an  Anglo-Saxon  population  as  highly  charged  with 
electricity  as  any  among  the  Latin  races  at  the  most 
exciting  junctures  of  their  history. 

1  American  Archives;  Feb.  22,  1775.  The  entertainer  of  these  officers 
paid  dearly  for  his  opinions.  An  important  Whig,  whose  goods  were 
within  the  British  lines  at  Boston,  was  allowed  by  way  of  compensation  to 
use  the  furniture  of  the  Marlborough  loyalist  for  his  own  so  long  as  the 
siege  lasted.  Mr.  Barnes  was  subsequently  proscribed  and  banished.  He 
died  in  London. 


286  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

At  last  the  thunder-cloud  broke,  and  flash  after  flash 
lit  up  the  gloom  which  overhung  the  land.  Gage, 
rather  because  he  was  expected  to  take  some  forward 
step,  than  because  he  saw  clearly  where  to  go,  con- 
ceived the  idea  of  destroying  the  stores  which  had  been 
collected  at  Concord.  The  force  told  off  for  this  ser- 
vice, according  to  a  faulty  practice  of  those  times,  con- 
sisted of  detachments  from  many  regiments;  and  the 
officer  in  charge  of  the  whole  was  incompetent.  The 
troops  started  before  midnight.  At  four  in  the  morn- 
ing, just  as  an  April  day  was  breaking,  they  reached  the 
village  of  Lexington,  and  found  sixty  or  seventy  of  the 
local  militia  waiting  for  them  on  the  common.  Firing 
ensued,  and  the  Americans  were  dispersed,  leaving 
seven  of  their  number  dead  or  dying.  It  was  a  chilly 
and  a  depressing  prologue  to  a  mighty  drama.  The 
British  advanced  to  Concord,  where  they  spoiled  some 
flour,  knocked  the  trunnions  off  three  iron  guns,  burned 
a  heap  of  wooden  spoons  and  trenchers,  and  cut  down 
a  Liberty  pole.  In  order  to  cover  these  trumpery 
operations  a  party  of  a  hundred  infantry  had  been 
stationed  at  a  bridge  over  the  neighbouring  river,  and 
towards  ten  o'clock  they  were  attacked  by  about  thrice 
as  many  provincials,  who  came  resolutely  on.  After 
two  or  three  had  fallen  on  either  side,  the  regulars  gave 
way  and  retreated  in  confusion  upon  their  main  body  in 
the  centre  of  the  town. 

Pages  and  pages  have  been  written  about  the  history 
of  each  ten  minutes  in  that  day,  and  the  name  of  every 
colonist  who  played  a  leading  part  is  a  household  word  in 
America.  The  main  outlines  of  the  affair  are  beyond 
dispute.  When  Colonel  Smith  discovered  that  there 
was  nothing  for  him  to  do  at  Concord,  and  made  up  his 
mind  to  return  to  Boston,  he  should  have  returned 
forthwith.  As  it  was,  he  delayed  till  noon  ;  and  those 
two  hours  were  his  ruin.  The  provincials  who  had 
been  engaged  at  the  bridge  did  not  push  their  advan- 
tage. They  hesitated  to  act  as  if  war  had  been  openly 
declared  against  England ;  and  they  were  not  in  a  vin- 


LEXINGTON  28? 

dictive  frame  of  mind,  as  they  had  heard  nothing 
beyond  a  vague  report  of  the  affair  at  Lexington.  But 
by  the  time  the  British  commander  had  completed  his 
arrangements  for  withdrawing  from  his  position  the 
whole  country  was  up,  in  front,  around,  and  behind 
him.  Those  who  came  from  the  direction  of  the  sea 
knew  what  had  taken  place  that  day  at  early  dawn ; 
and,  where  they  had  got  the  story  wrong,  it  was  in  a 
shape  which  made  them  only  the  more  angry.  From 
every  quarter  of  the  compass  over  thirty  miles  square 
the  Ezras,  and  Abners,  and  Silases  were  trooping  in. 
The  rural  township  of  Woburn  "turned  out  extraor- 
dinary," and  marched  into  action  a  hundred  and 
eighty  strong.  The  minute-men  of  Dedham,  encouraged 
by  the  presence  of  a  company  of  veterans  who  had 
fought  in  the  French  wars,  spent,  but  did  not  waste, 
the  time  that  was  required  to  hear  a  prayer  from  their 
clergyman  as  they  stood  on  the  green  in  front  of  the 
church  steps.  Then  they  started  on  their  way,  "  leav- 
ing the  town  almost  literally  without  a  male  inhabitant 
before  the  age  of  seventy,  and  above  that  of  sixteen." 
Carrying  guns  which  had  been  used  in  old  Indian 
battles,  and  headed  by  drums  which  had  beat  at  Louis- 
burg,  they  covered  the  hillsides,  and  swarmed  among 
the  enclosures  and  the  coppices,  in  such  numbers  that 
it  seemed  to  their  adversaries  "as  if  men  had  dropped 
from  the  clouds."  It  was  a  calamity  for  the  British 
that  the  first  encounter  of  the  war  took  place  under 
circumstances  which  made  their  success  a  military 
impossibility.  When  a  force,  no  larger  than  the  rear- 
guard of  an  army,  is  obliged  to  retreat,  and  to  continue 
retreating,  the  extent  of  the  disaster  is  only  a  question 
of  the  amount  of  ground  that  has  to  be  traversed,  and  of 
the  activity  and  audacity  which  the  enemy  display.  The 
colonists  well  knew  the  distance  at  which  their  fire  was 
effective,  and  were  determined,  at  any  personal  risk,  to 
get  and  to  remain  within  that  range.  The  English 
regimental  officers,  whenever  one  of  them  could  collect 
a  few  privates  of  his  own  corps,  made  a  good  fight  dur- 


288  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

ing  the  earlier  stage  of  the  retreat.  But,  before  they 
emerged  from  the  woods  which  lined  most  of  the  six 
miles  between  Concord  and  Lexington,  ammunition 
began  to  fail ;  the  steadier  men  were  largely  employed 
in  helping  the  wounded  along ;  many  of  the  soldiers 
rather  ran  than  marched  in  order;  and  the  column 
passed  through  Lexington  a  beaten  and,  unless  speedy 
help  should  come,  a  doomed  force. 

They  had  still  before  them  twice  as  much  road  as 
they  had  travelled  already.  But  the  very  worst  was 
over ;  because  a  few  furlongs  beyond  the  town  they 
were  met  by  the  reserves  from  Boston.  The  support- 
ing body  was  better  composed  than  their  own,  for  it 
was  made  up  of  whole  regiments ;  and  it  was  much 
better  commanded.  Lord  Percy,  owing  to  stupid  blun- 
ders which  were  no  fault  of  his,  should  have  been  at 
Concord  by  eleven  in  the  morning  instead  of  being  near 
Lexington  at  two  in  the  afternoon ;  but,  now  that  he 
was  on  the  ground,  he  proved  that  he  knew  his  business. 
He  disposed  the  field  pieces  which  he  had  brought  with 
him  in  such  a  manner  as  to  check  the  provincials,  and 
give  a  welcome  respite  to  Colonel  Smith's  exhausted 
soldiers.  When  the  homeward  march  recommenced, 
he  fought  strongly  and  skilfully  from  point  to  point. 
The  hottest  work  of  the  whole  day  was  as  far  along  the 
line  of  retreat  as  West  Cambridge.  It  was  there  that 
an  example  was  made  of  some  minute-men  who  had 
covered  sixteen  miles  in  four  hours  in  order  to  occupy 
a  post  of  vantage,  and  who  were  too  busy  towards  their 
front  to  notice  that  there  was  danger  behind  them  in 
the  shape  of  a  British  flanking  party.  But  the  Ameri- 
cans were  in  great  heart,  and  they  were  briskly  and 
gallantly  led.  The  senior  officer  present  was  General 
Heath,  a  brave  and  honest  man,  who  had  learned  war 
from  books,  but  who  did  well  enough  on  a  day  when 
the  most  essential  quality  in  a  commander  was  indiffer- 
ence to  bullets ;  and  Warren  had  hurried  up  from 
Boston,  eager  to  show  that  his  oration  of  the  month 
before  was  not  a  string  of  empty  words.  "  They  have 


LEXINGTON  28$ 

begun  it,"  he  said,  as  he  was  waiting  to  cross  the  Ferry. 
"  That  either  party  could  do.  And  we  will  end  it.  That 
only  one  can  do."  From  the  moment  that  he  came 
under  fire  at  Lexington  he  was  as  conspicuous  on  the 
one  side  as  Lord  Percy  on  the  other  :  and  there  was 
not  much  to  choose  between  the  narrowness  of  their 
escapes,  for  the  New  Englander  had  the  hair-pin  shot 
out  of  a  curl,  and  the  Northumbrian  had  a  button  shot 
off  his  waistcoat. 

No  courage  or  generalship  on  the  part  of  the  British 
commander  could  turn  a  rearward  march  into  a  winning 
battle.  As  the  afternoon  wore  on,  his  men  had  ex- 
pended nearly  all  their  cartridges ;  and  they  had  noth- 
ing to  eat,  for  the  waggons  containing  their  supplies 
had  been  captured  by  the*  exertions  of  a  parish  minister. 
"  I  never  broke  my  fast,"  so  a  soldier  related,  "  for  forty- 
eight  hours,  for  we  carried  no  provisions.  I  had  my 
hat  shot  off  my  head  three  times.  Two  balls  went 
through  my  coat,  and  carried  away  my  bayonet  from 
my  side." l  The  provincials  had  surmounted  their  re- 
spect for  the  cannon,  and  kept  at  closer  quarters  than 
ever.  As  the  tumult  rolled  eastwards  into  the  thickly 
inhabited  districts  near  the  coast,  the  militia  came  up 
in  more  numerous  and  stronger  companies,  fresh  and 
with  full  pouches.  When  the  sun  was  setting  the  re- 
tiring troops,  half  starved  and  almost  mad  with  thirst, 
came  to  a  halt  on  the  English  side  of  the  causeway  over 
which  the  Cambridge  highway  entered  the  peninsula  of 
Charlestown.  They  were  only  just  in  time.  "  From 
the  best  accounts  I  have  been  able  to  collect,"  Wash- 
ington wrote  six  weeks  later  on,  "  I  believe  the  fact, 
stripped  of  all  colouring,  to  be  plainly  this  :  that  if  the 
retreat  had  not  been  as  precipitate  as  it  was,  (and  God 
knows  it  could  not  well  have  been  more  so,)  the  minis- 
terial troops  must  have  surrendered,  or  been  totally  cut 
off.  For  they  had  not  arrived  in  Charlestown,  under 
cover  of  their  ships,  half  an  hour  before  a  powerful 
body  of  men  from  Marblehead  and  Salem  was  at  their 

1  American  Archives;  Letter  of  April  28,  1775. 
VOL.  I.  u 


2QO  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

heels,  and  must,  if  they  had  happened  to  be  up  one 
hour  sooner,  inevitably  have  intercepted  their  retreat  to 
Charlestown."  That  was  the  conclusion  at  which  Wash- 
ington arrived ;  and  his  view,  then  or  since,  has  never 
been  disputed.1 

The  Americans  lost  from  ninety  to  a  hundred  men, 
of  whom  more  than  half  were  killed  outright ;  and  the 
British  about  three  times  as  many.  The  strategic  re- 
sults of  the  affair  were  out  of  all  proportion  to  the 
numbers  engaged  in  it ;  for  it  settled  the  character  and 
direction  of  the  first  campaign  in  the  Revolutionary  war. 
For  fifteen  months  to  come  the  British  army  did  not 
again  take  the  open  field.  Bunker's  Hill  was  but  a 
sortie  on  a  large  scale,  and  ranks  only  as  a  terrible  and 
glorious  episode  in  the  operations  of  a  siege  which,  by 
the  time  the  battle  was  fought,  had  already  lasted  for 
the  space  of  eight  weeks.  For  when  Lord  Percy 
crossed  Charlestown  Neck,  and  General  Heath  halted 
on  Charlestown  Common,  the  invasion  of  Massachu- 
setts by  the  English  was  over,  and  the  blockade  of 
Boston  by  the  Americans  had  begun.  In  the  previous 
December  the  Secretary  at  War  had  confided  his  antici- 
pations to  the  Secretary  for  the  Colonies.  "  I  doubt," 
so  his  letter  ran,  "whether  all  the  troops  in  North 
America,  though  probably  enow  for  a  pitched  battle 
with  the  strength  of  the  Province,  are  enow  to  subdue 
it :  being  of  great  extent,  and  full  of  men  accustomed  to 
fire-arms.  It  is  true  they  have  not  been  thought  brave, 
but  enthusiasm  gives  vigour  of  mind  and  body  unknown 
before."2  As  Lord  Barrington  had  turned  his  attention 
to  the  subject  of  courage,  it  was  a  pity  that  he  could  not 
find  enough  of  it  to  tell  his  views  to  the  King  and  the 
Bedfords,  instead  of  writing  them  to  Dartmouth,  who 
knew  them  already.  But  at  sundown  on  the  nineteenth 
of  April  the  event  had  spoken  ;  and  it  mattered  little 
now  what  the  English  ministers  said,  or  left  unsaid, 
among  themselves. 

1  Washington  to  George  William  Fairfax  in  England  ;   May  31,  1775. 

2  The  Political  Life  of  Viscount  Barrington  ;  Section  viii. 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE   INVESTMENT   OF   BOSTON.      BUNKER'S    HILL 

MASSACHUSETTS,  from  the  nature  of  the  case,  had 
fought  the  first  engagement  single-handed ;  but  conse- 
quences were  sure  to  ensue  which  would  be  too  much  for 
her  unassisted  strength.  Next  morning  her  Committee 
of  Safety  reported  the  condition  of  affairs  to  the  rest  of 
the  New  England  provinces,  and  urged  them  to  send 
help,  and  to  send  it  promptly.  "We  shall  be  glad," 
they  said,  "  that  our  brethren  who  come  to  our  aid  may 
be  supplied  with  military  stores  and  provisions,  as  we 
have  none  of  either,  more  than  is  absolutely  necessary 
for  ourselves."  These  words  were  written  as  soon  as  it 
was  light ;  but  the  people  to  whom  they  were  addressed 
did  not  generally  wait  for  a  summons.  The  news  of 
Lexington  found  Israel  Putnam,  in  leather  frock  and 
apron,  busy  among  his  hired  men  over  the  labours  of 
his  farm.  He  started  off  on  a  round  of  visits  to  the 
nearest  towns  of  Connecticut ;  called  out  the  militia  ;  and 
ordered  them  to  follow  him  as  fast  as  they  were  mustered. 
Then  he  set  out  for  Cambridge,  and  arrived  there  at 
daybreak  on  the  twenty-first  of  April,  having  ridden  the 
same  horse  a  hundred  miles  within  the  eighteen  hours. 
By  noon  on  the  twentieth  the  word  had  got  across  the 
Merrimac,  and  the  boats  on  their  return  journey  were 
crowded  with  New  Hampshire  minute-men.  "  At  dusk," 
Mr.  Bancroft  writes,  "they  reached  Haverhill  ferry,  a 
distance  of  twenty-seven  miles,  having  run  rather  than 
marched.  They  halted  at  Andover  only  for  refresh- 
ments, and,  traversing  fifty-five  miles  in  less  than  twenty 
hours,  by  sunrise  on  the  twenty-first  paraded  on  Cam- 
bridge Common." 

291  U2 


Rhode  Island  was  somewhat  more  deliberate  and,  as 
befitted  its  size,  more  heedful  of  its  dignity.  On  the 
twenty-fifth  of  April  the  Assembly  of  the  little  com- 
munity voted  to  raise  an  army  of  observation  which 
should  co-operate  with  the  forces  of  the  neighbouring 
colonies,  but  with  a  separate  Ordnance  department  and 
a  Commander-in-Chief  of  its  own.  If  they  were  bent 
on  a  policy  of  isolation  and  punctiliousness,  they  had 
chosen  the  wrong  man  to  have  charge  of  their  troops 
in  the  field.  Nathanael  Greene  was  a  born  soldier,  and 
had  in  him  the  material  for  making  the  sort  of  general 
under  whom  other  born  soldiers  desire  to  fight.  For 
years  past  he  would  leave  his  ordinary  occupations,  if 
for  nothing  else,  in  order  to  be  present  at  any  review 
where  a  score  of  militia  companies  were  being  put 
through  their  exercises  together.  He  had  been  seen,  in 
a  coat  and  hat  of  Quaker  fashion,  watching  the  regulars 
on  the  Common  at  Boston,  and  buying  treatises  on  the 
Military  Art  at  the  booksellers'.  When  he  arrived  in 
camp  he  found  his  troops  lukewarm  for  the  cause,  and 
in  a  state  of  discipline  demanding  on  his  part  capabilities 
of  a  higher  order  than  could  be  acquired  out  of  a  drill 
book.  But  before  many  weeks  were  over  he  had  them 
thoroughly  in  hand,  and  he  showed  himself  as  eager  to 
obey  as  he  was  competent  to  command.  When  Wash- 
ington was  placed  by  Congress  at  the  head  of  the  Con- 
tinental army,  the  Assembly  of  Rhode  Island  got  the 
better  of  their  passion  for  independent  action ;  and 
Greene  had  the  satisfaction  of  placing  himself  and  his 
contingent  at  the  disposal  of  one  who,  as  the  captain  of 
a  citizen  army,  would  have  stood  a  comparison  after  the 
manner  of  Plutarch  with  any  of  those  heroes  of  antiq- 
uity whose  histories  Greene  had  so  long  and  so  lovingly 
studied. 

The  army  of  New  England,  —  for  such  it  was,  and 
such,  by  whatever  title  it  might  be  called,  it  remained 
until  the  fate  of  New  England  was  finally  and  irrev- 
ocably decided,  —  soon  attained  a  strength  of  sixteen 
thousand  men.  Of  these  Connecticut  furnished  two 


INVESTMENT  OF  BOSTON 
\ 

thousand  three  hundred,  New  Hampshire  and  Rhode 
Island  between  them  about  as  many,  and  Massachusetts 
the  rest.  On  the  morning  after  the  fight  General 
Heath,  before  he  handed  over  the  command,  took  mea- 
sures to  provide  a  first  meal  for  the  assembled  multi- 
tude. "All  the  eatables  in  the  town  of  Cambridge, 
which  could  be  spared,  were  collected  for  breakfast, 
and  the  college  kitchen  and  utensils  procured  for  cook- 
ing. Some  carcasses  of  beef  and  pork,  prepared  for 
the  Boston  market,  were  obtained ;  and  a  large  quantity 
of  ship-bread,  said  to  belong  to  the  British  Navy,  was 
taken."  J  Such  were  the  foundations  of  a  commissariat 
system  which,  as  long  as  Boston  was  the  seat  of  war, 
kept  itself  on  a  level  with  the  reputation  of  that  well- 
fed  neighbourhood.  The  organisation  of  the  army,  in 
all  other  departments,  was  loose  and  primitive,  but,  un- 
til the  British  garrison  should  become  numerous  enough 
again  to  take  the  offensive,  not  inefficient.  The  Con- 
gress of  Massachusetts  had  nominated  General  Arte- 
mas  Ward  to  command  their  forces ;  and  the  superior 
officers  from  the  other  colonies  copied  his  orders  of  the 
day,  and  yielded  him  as  much  obedience  as  he  cared  to 
exact,  which  was  very  little.  He  was  old  and  ill ;  un- 
able to  get  on  horseback ;  and  quite  willing  to  leave  to 
his  energetic  and  enthusiastic  brigadiers  the  responsi- 
bility of  guarding  their  own  front,  when  once  he  had 
allotted  to  them  their  posts  in  the  line  of  investment. 

Elementary  as  were  their  warlike  arrangements,  the 
Americans  presented  a  formidable  appearance  when 
viewed  from  behind  the  intrenchments  opposite.  Many 
of  them  were  dressed  in  the  working  clothes  which  they 
had  been  wearing  when  the  alarm  reached  them  in  their 
fields  and  villages ;  and  they  were  officered  by  trades- 
men, and  mechanics,  and  graziers  who  differed  little 
from  those  of  their  own  class  in  Europe,  except  that 
they  esteemed  themselves  as  good  as  people  who  had 
been  brought  up  to  do  nothing.  But  that  levy  of  civil- 
ians had  already  vindicated  their  claim  to  be  treated  in 

1  HeatKs  Memoirs  ;  April,  1775. 


294  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

as  strict  conformity  to  the  laws,  and  even  the  courtesies, 
of  war,  as  if  they  had  been  so  many  thousand  white- 
coated  Frenchmen,  with  a  Marshal  to  command  them, 
and  with  Dukes  and  Marquises  for  their  colonels.  Gage 
soon  discovered  that,  when  he  wanted  anything  from 
the  colonists,  he  would  have  to  ask  for  it  civilly.  After 
a  long  negotiation  with  the  authorities  of  the  popular 
party  he  concluded  an  agreement  under  which  all  inhab- 
itants of  Boston  who,  when  the  siege  commenced,  found 
themselves  on  what  they  considered  the  wrong  side  of 
the  wall,  might  pass  from  town  to  country,  (or,  as  the 
case  might  be,  from  country  to  town,)  and  take  their 
chattels  with  them.  Early  in  June  the  Americans  ob- 
tained a  practical  recognition  of  their  rights  as  combat- 
ants in  the  shape  of  an  exchange  of  prisoners ;  and  the 
occasion  was  lacking  in  none  of  the  compliments  and 
hospitalities  with  which  the  chivalry  of  warfare  has, 
time  out  of  mind,  invested  that  ceremony.  The  event 
was  the  more  grateful  to  men  of  honour  in  both  camps 
because  it  led  to  the  final  extinction  of  a  singularly  dis- 
creditable calumny.  The  London  Gazette,  in  an  official 
account  of  the  affair  of  the  nineteenth  of  April,  informed 
the  world  that  the  provincials  had  scalped  the  wounded. 
When  the  English  who  had  been  captured  were  restored 
to  their  regiments,  they  all,  officers  and  men,  were  warm 
in  their  expressions  of  gratitude  for  the  kindness-  they 
had  met  with,  and  the  tenderness  with  which  they  had 
been  nursed ;  for  very  few  of  them  had  been  taken  un- 
hurt.1 From  that  day  forward  nothing  more  was  heard 

1  An  antidote  to  the  calumny  was  not  long  in  reaching  England.  In 
the  June  number  of  the  Gentleman's  Magazine  there  appeared  a  statement 
by  a  Lieutenant  of  the  King's  own  regiment.  "  I  was  wounded,"  he  says, 
"  at  the  attack  of  the  bridge,  and  am  now  treated  with  the  greatest  human- 
ity, and  taken  all  possible  care  of,  by  the  Provincials  at  Medford."  Gage 
was  expressly  told  that  his  own  surgeons  might  come  out  and  dress  the 
wounded  ;  but  there  was  no  need  of  it,  for  they  were  admirably  doctored. 
A  soldier's  wife  wrote  home  on  the  2nd  of  May:  "My  husband  was 
wounded  and  taken  prisoner  ;  but  they  use  him  well,  and  I  am  striving  to 
get  to  him,  as  he  is  very  dangerous.  My  husband  is  now  lying  in  one  of 
their  hospitals,  at  a  place  called  Cambridge.  I  hear  my  husband's  leg  is 
broke,  and  my  heart  is  broke." 


INVESTMENT  OF  BOSTON  295 

of  a  fable  very  unlike  anything  which,  before  or  since, 
has  appeared  in  a  military  despatch  written  in  our  lan- 
guage. The  Americans,  if  they  had  been  on  the  watch 
for  a  grievance,  might  with  some  plausibility  have  put 
forward  countercharges;  because,  when  a  force  loses 
more  killed  than  wounded,  there  is  ground  for  supptos- 
ing  that  rough  things  were  done  by  the  enemy.  But 
they  knew  that  hand-to-hand  fighting  is  a  rude  and  blind 
business ;  they  were  satisfied  by  having  so  quickly  con- 
quered the  respect  of  their  redoubtable  adversary ;  and 
their  complacency  was  not  diminished  by  the  indigna- 
tion which  these  mutual  amenities  excited  in  the  Boston 
Tories,  who  had  devoutly  believed  in  all  the  vaunts  that 
Gage  had  ever  uttered  about  his  fixed  determination 
never  to  treat  with  rebels. 

The  hour  was  at  hand  when  the  title  of  the  Ameri- 
cans to  rank  as  belligerents  was  to  be  severely  tested. 
In  the  early  summer  reinforcements  from  home  raised 
the  British  garrison  to  seventeen  battalions  of  infantry, 
and  five  companies  of  artillery.  Gage  had  now  at  his 
disposition  a  force  half  as  large  again  as  the  army 
which  triumphed  at  Culloden,  and  four  times  more  nu- 
merous than  the  regular  troops  who  crushed  the  rising 
of  our  Western  counties  at  Sedgemoor.  On  the  twenty- 
fifth  of  May  the  Cerberus  arrived  with  the  Major-Gen- 
erals on  board.  They  disembarked  under  a  fire  of 
epigrams  which  their  number,  taken  in  conjunction  with 
the  name  of  the  three-headed  monster  after  whom  their 
ship  was  called,  suggested  to  those  Boston  wits  who  had 
read  Virgil,  or  at  any  rate  a  classical  dictionary.  It  was 
an  evil  day  for  Gage  when  Burgoyne  landed ;  for  the 
faults  and  the  merits  of  that  officer  combined  to  make 
him  as  dangerous  a  subordinate  as  ever  a  commander 
was  afflicted  with.  Inventive  and  enterprising,  and  un- 
deniably gallant,  he  had  obtained  just  enough  military 
celebrity  to  turn  his  head,  and  to  tempt  him,  through 
discontent,  into  disloyalty  towards  his  chief.  Before 
leaving  London  he  had  been  admitted,  among  other 
guests,  to  the  weekly  dinner  of  the  Cabinet.  He  was 


296  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

impressed  by  the  absurdity  of  pretending  to  do  the 
secret  business  of  the  State  in  "  so  numerous  and  motley 
a  company ;  "  but  he  had  made  excellent  use  of  his  op- 
portunities for  his  own  personal  advantage.  He  had 
succeeded  in  establishing  relations  with  great  men,  and 
men  on  the  way  to  greatness,  no  one  of  whom  was  fully 
aware  how  intimate  Burgoyne  was  with  the  others.  As 
soon  as  he  was  ashore  at  Boston  he  began  a  correspon- 
dence with  Lord  Rochford,  who  was  a  Secretary  of 
State,  and  Lord  George  Germaine,  who  seemed  likely 
to  become  one ;  with  Lord  Dartmouth,  with  the  Military 
Secretary  of  the  Horseguards,  and,  above  all,  with  the 
Prime  Minister.  Burgoyne's  voluminous,  but  always 
vivid  and  interesting,  letters,  the  burden  of  which  was 
a  searching  exposure  of  Gage's  mistakes,  ruined  that 
officer  in  the  judgement  of  his  employers,  and  remain  on 
record  to  destroy  his  chance  of  passing  in  the  eyes  of 
posterity  as  an  unfortunate,  rather  than  an  incapable, 
commander.  But,  however  full  Burgoyne's  sheet  might 
be  with  comments  upon  his  chief's  blundering  strategy, 
there  always  was  a  corner  kept  for  the  demands  of  self- 
interest.  When  addressing  a  Minister,  or  any  one  who 
had  the  ear  of  a  Minister,  the  persuasive  Major-General 
never  failed  to  insist  on  the  paltry  nature  of  his  own 
present  functions  as  compared  with  his  abilities  and 
antecedents ;  and  implored  that  he  might  be  recalled  to 
England  for  the  purpose  of  giving  the  Cabinet,  by 
word  of  mouth,  information  and  advice  which  he  could 
not  venture  to  set  down  in  writing. 

That  which  was  reported  about  Gage  to  Downing 
Street  was  a  grave  matter  for  him ;  but  his  fame  suf- 
fered still  more  from  the  compositions  which  his  elo- 
quent subordinate  prepared  for  publication,  at  his 
request,  and  in  his  name.  Proud  of  his  soldiership,  Bur- 
goyne rated  himself  higher  yet  in  his  character  as  an 
author.  His  most  ambitious  literary  efforts  belonged  to 
the  leisure  of  a  later  period  in  his  life,  when  there  was 
no  further  demand  for  the  services  of  his  unlucky  sword. 
Up  to  1775  he  had  achieved  nothing  more  durable  than 


INVESTMENT  OF  BOSTON  297 

prologues  and  epilogues ;  and,  as  his  highest  flight,  he 
had  prepared  an  operatic  version  of  "As  You  Like 
It."  One  quatrain  will  suffice  as  a  specimen  of  the 
adaptation. 

"  Who  was  the  man  that  struck  the  deer  ? 
The  badge  of  triumph  let  him  wear. 
Round  the  haunch  of  the  noble  prey 
Hail  him,  hail  him,  lord  of  the  day  ! " 

But  Burgoyne  was  as  much  in  love  with  his  pen  as  if 
he  had  written  the  original  comedy  ;  and  that  pen  he 
now  placed  at  the  disposal  of  his  superior  in  command. 
His  style,  excellent  in  a  letter,  became  artificial  in  a 
State-paper,  and  had  in  it  a  touch  of  rhodomontade 
fatally  unsuited  to  documents  which  dealt  with  burning 
questions  at  a  time  of  almost  unexampled  seriousness. 
On  the  twelfth  of  June  General  Gage  issued  a  procla- 
mation denouncing  the  rebels  who,  "  with  a  preposter- 
ous parade  of  military  arrangement,  affected  to  hold  the 
royal  army  besieged ;"  assuring  "the  infatuated  multi- 
tude "  that  he  did  not  bear  the  sword  in  vain ;  declaring 
martial  law ;  offering  pardon  to  such  as  would  lay  down 
their  arms  and  "  stand  distinct  and  separate  from  the 
parricides  of  the  constitution ; "  but  excepting  from  that 
pardon,  under  any  condition  whatsoever,  Samuel  Adams 
and  John  Hancock.  No  manifesto  was  ever  worse 
adapted  to  the  taste  of  its  intended  readers,  except  per- 
haps the  celebrated  address  to  the  French  nation,  in  the 
year  1792,  which  earned  for  the  Duke  of  Brunswick  a 
place  in  literature  as  the  most  unsuccessful  of  royal 
authors.  The  minute  and  affectionate  care,  which  evi- 
dently had  been  bestowed  on  the  task  of  polishing  each 
of  the  bloodthirsty  sentences  in  Gage's  proclamation, 
suggested  to  the  patriots  that  it  had  been  prompted  by 
the  devil ;  but  as  a  matter  of  fact  it  was  drafted  by  Bur- 
goyne, who,  except  on  paper,  was  as  humane  a  man  as 
lived.  And  so  it  came  to  pass  that  Gage,  after  all  the 
disasters  which  overtook  him  on  account  of  his  being 
exceedingly  dull,  contrived  to  saddle  himself  with  the 


298  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

additional  curse  of  a  reputation  for  pretentious  and  mis- 
placed cleverness. 

Burgoyne  was  on  surer  ground  when  he  was  expos- 
ing to  Cabinet  Ministers  the  defects  and  dangers  of  the 
military  situation.  He  and  his  two  colleagues  were 
filled  with  surprise  and  shame  by  the  state  of  matters 
which  they  found  at  Boston.  These  paladins  of  the 
great  war,  accustomed  to  drive  the  enemy  whenever 
and  wherever  they  met  him,  were  greeted  by  the  news 
that  a  British  force,  as  large  as  any  which  had  ever 
taken  the  field  in  America,  was  blockaded  in  its  quarters 
by  an  army  of  whose  existence  they  had  never  even 
heard  until  that  moment.  The  town  on  the  land  side, 
Burgoyne  wrote,  was  invested  by  a  rabble  in  arms 
flushed  with  success  and  insolence,  who  had  advanced 
their  sentries  within  pistol  shot  of  the  royal  outposts. 
The  servants  of  the  Crown,  and  their  well-wishers 
among  the  civil  population,  were  lost  in  a  stupefaction 
of  anger,  bewilderment,  and  despondency.  All  passes 
which  led  to  the  mainland  were  closely  beleaguered  ; 
and,  even  if  the  hostile  lines  were  forced,  the  British 
were  not  in  a  condition  to  make  a  forward  movement. 
Bread  waggons,  hospital  carriages,  sumpter-horses,  and 
artillery  horses  were  wanting.  The  magazines  had  been 
left  unfurnished ;  the  military  chest  was  empty ;  and 
there  was  no  money  in  the  town.  Our  troops  were  un- 
paid, and  our  officers  could  not  get  their  bills  cashed  at 
any  sacrifice.  Even  the  five  hundred  pounds  apiece, 
which  his  Majesty  promised  that  his  Major-Generals 
should  receive  on  their  arrival,  were  not  forthcoming ; 
and  all  this  at  a  time  when,  (so  Burgoyne  declared 
with  a  pathos  which  soared  above  statistics,)  a  pound  of 
fresh  mutton  could  only  be  bought  for  its  weight  in 
gold.  For  the  apathy  and  dejection  which  prevailed 
among  military  people  had  gained  the  sister  service. 
The  Royal  ships  lay  idle  and  helpless,  expecting  from 
day  to  day  to  be  cannonaded  at  their  moorings.  The 
crews  of  the  rebel  whale-boats  had  cleared  off  the  sheep 


BUNKER'S  HILL 


299 


and  cattle  from  the  neighbouring  islands ;  had  burned 
a  British  schooner  under  the  very  eyes  of  the  Admiral ; 
and  had  carried  away  the  cannons  to  arm  their  own  bat- 
teries. When  those  batteries  opened  fire,  there  would 
be  witnessed  the  most  singular  and  shameful  event  in 
the  history  of  the  world,  —  a  paltry  skirmish,  (for  Lex- 
ington was  nothing  more,)  "inducing  results  as  rapid 
and  decisive  as  the  battle  of  Pharsalia ;  and  the  colours 
of  the  fleet  and  army  of  Great  Britain,  without  a  conflict, 
kicked  out  of  America." 

The  style  of  writing  was  after  the  model  of  Junius, 
rather  than  of  Julius  Caesar.  But  the  sentiments  were 
those  of  a  soldier;  and  Burgoyne  took  no  pains  to 
hide  them  in  any  company.  He  exclaimed  to  the  first 
colonist  whom  he  met,  and  in  the  course  of  a  talk  which 
served  the  purpose  of  the  modern  interview  of  dis- 
embarkation :  "  Let  us  get  in,  and  we  will  soon  find 
elbow-room."  The  saying  caught  the  popular  ear,  and 
the  time  was  not  far  distant  when  its  author  learned  to 
his  cost  that  it  is  more  easy  to  coin  a  phrase  than  to 
recall  it  from  circulation.  The  lie  of  the  country  was 
such  that  Burgoyne's  expression  exactly  represented 
the  necessities  of  the  hour.  To  North  and  South  of  the 
peninsula  of  Boston,  separated  from  the  town  in  each 
case  by  some  five  hundred  yards  of  salt  water,  two 
headlands,  of  the  same  conformation  and  size  as  the 
peninsula  itself,  ran  out  into  the  bay.1  If  Gage  made 
play  with  his  elbows,  he  would  sweep  the  heights  of 
Dorchester  on  his  left  hand,  and  the  heights  above 
Charlestown  on  his  right.  His  subordinates  insisted 
that  he  should  exert  himself.  As  soon  as  there  was  a 
prospect  of  fighting  under  leaders  whom  it  was  an 
honour  to  follow,  the  army  recovered  its  spirits,  and, 
of  all  the  disagreeable  sensations  which  had  affected  it, 
retained  none  except  resentment.  "  I  wish  the  Ameri- 

1  All  localities  mentioned  in  the  text  may  be  identified  in  the  map  of 
"  Boston  and  its  Environs  "  at  the  end  of  this  volume,  reproduced  from 
the  Atlas  accompanying  Marshall's  Life  of  Washington,  published  at 
Philadelphia  in  1807.  The  map  has  been  partially  coloured,  and  a  certain 
number  of  additional  places  marked,  for  purposes  of  elucidation. 


300  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

cans  may  be  brought  to  a  sense  of  their  duty.  One 
good  drubbing,  which  I  long  to  give  them,  might  have 
a  good  effect  towards  it."  That  was  how  Captain  Har- 
ris of  the  Fifth  Foot,  a  young  man  of  spirit,  with  a  great 
future  before  him,  (for  he  died  Lord  Harris  of  Seringa- 
patam,)  wrote  home  on  the  twelfth  of  June ;  and  by 
every  packet  which  sailed  for  England  such  letters  were 
being  posted  by  the  score.1 

Gage  and  his  advisers,  with  sound  judgement,  deter- 
mined to  begin  by  occupying  the  heights  of  Dorchester. 
The  promontory  which  lay  to  the  South  was  of  the  two 
the  more  accessible  to  the  Americans ;  and,  if  they 
succeeded  in  establishing  themselves  there,  it  would  be 
a  more  tenable  post  and  a  more  formidable  menace  to 
the  garrison  of  Boston.  But  the  earlier  operations  in 
a  civil  war  are  dictated  rather  by  human  nature  than 
by  strategic  principles ;  and  the  clash  of  battle,  when 
it  arose,  broke  out  in  an  unexpected  quarter.  The 
moral  forces  at  work  in  the  Colonial,  and  in  the  British, 
camps  were  not  dissimilar.  General  Ward,  like  Gen- 
eral Gage,  and  with  much  better  reason,  would  have 
preferred  to  strengthen  his  defences  and  stay  quiet 
behind  them  ;  but  he  too  had  brigadiers  who  were  bent 
upon  action.  An  American  council  of  war  debated  the 
proposal  to  seize  and  fortify  the  heights  of  Charlestown. 
Ward  was  against  the  plan,  and  Warren  also  ;  for  it 

1  The  letters  which  Captain  Harris  sent  home  from  Boston  agreeably 
portray  the  feelings  of  the  best  among  our  regimental  officers.  He 
joined  the  garrison  in  August  1774,  and  arrived  at  his  destination  ready 
to  be  pleased,  and  very  willing  to  make  himself  pleasant  to  the  civilians 
among  whom  he  was  quartered.  "  The  Harbour,"  he  wrote,  "  and  the 
view  of  Boston  is  the  most  charming  thing  I  ever  saw:  far  superior  to 
the  Bay  of  Naples,  and  having  the  advantage  of  being  wooded  by  nature 
as  picturesquely  as  if  art  had  superintended  her  operation."  The  herbage 
on  the  Common  was  richer  than  he  had  ever  seen  elsewhere  ;  and  he  was 
at  much  pains  to  protect  the  cows  of  the  citizens,  as  they  ate  the  sacred 
grass,  from  any  interference  on  the  part  of  British  sentries.  "Though 
I  confess,"  said  the  keen  young  soldier,  "  that  I  should  like  to  try  what 
stuff  I  am  made  of,  yet  I  would  rather  the  trial  should  be  with  others 
than  these  poor  fellows  of  kindred  blood."  But  he  could  not  avoid  his 
fate;  and  in  the  retreat  from  Lexington,  where  he  commanded  the  rear- 
guard, he  lost  his  Lieutenant,  and  half  his  company. 


BUNKER'S  HILL  301 

was  a  question  of  policy,  and  not  of  valour ;  but  Putnam 
took  the  other  side,  on  grounds  which  were  character- 
istic of  the  man.  The  operation  in  his  view  was  so 
critical,  and  the  position  so  exposed,  that  the  British 
would  be  irresistibly  tempted  to  attack  under  circum- 
stances which  might  be  trusted  to  bring  out  the  strong- 
est points  of  the  colonists.  "  The  Americans,"  he  said, 
"  are  not  afraid  of  their  heads,  though  very  much  afraid 
of  their  legs.  If  you  cover  these,  they  will  fight  for 
ever."  Even  such  a  qualified  species  of  courage  was 
a  great  deal  to  demand  from  men  who  had  never  been 
drilled  to  hold  up  their  heads,  and  whose  legs  had 
hitherto  been  chiefly  employed  in  walking  between  the 
plough  handles ;  but  Putnam,  if  any  one,  knew  both  the 
best  and  the  worst  which  could  be  expected  from  his 
countrymen  at  the  stage  of  military  discipline  to  which 
they  had  then  attained.  His  opinion  carried  weight 
in  a  quarter  where,  at  that  period  of  the  Revolution, 
the  ultimate  decision  lay.  On  the  fifteenth  of  June  the 
Committee  of  Safety  of  the  Massachusetts  Congress 
unanimously  resolved  to  advise  the  Council  of  War  that 
possession  of  the  hill  called  Bunker's  Hill  in  Charlestown 
should  be  securely  kept,  and  defended  by  sufficient 
forces. 

Next  evening  twelve  hundred  New  Englanders  were 
paraded  on  Cambridge  Common,  and  listened  to  the 
President  of  Harvard  College  while  he  invoked  the 
divine  blessing  on  an  enterprise  the  nature  of  which  was 
still  a  secret  for  almost  all  his  hearers.  They  were 
under  the  command  of  Colonel  Prescott,  who  was  old 
enough  to  have  served  at  Cape  Breton,  where  he  had 
exhibited  qualities  which  procured  him  the  offer  from 
the  British  military  authorities  of  a  commission  in  the 
regular  army.  When  night  fell  the  expedition  started  ; 
the  Colonel  in  front,  and  carts  filled  with  intrenching 
tools  following  in  the  rear.  The  men  had  their  weapons, 
their  blankets,  and  one  day's  rations ;  loose  powder  in 
their  horns,  but  not  very  much  of  it ;  and  in  their 
pouches  bullets  which  they  had  cast  themselves.  Even 


3O2  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

so  they  had  plenty  to  carry.  Their  equipment  was 
described  by  a  lieutenant  of  the  Royal  Marines ;  a 
corps  which,  after  its  usual  custom,  contrived  next  day 
to  get  a  very  near  view  of  the  enemy.  Both  officers 
and  soldiers,  this  gentleman  wrote,  wore  their  own 
clothes  ;  nor  did  he  see  any  colours  to  their  regiments. 
Their  firelocks  seemed  unwieldy,  and  some  were  of 
quite  extraordinary  length  ;  but  the  men,  (he  remarked,) 
were  mostly  robust  and  larger  than  the  English.  It 
must  be  remembered,  too,  that  the  clumsy  gun  was  an 
old  friend,  with  whose  good  and  bad  qualities  they  were 
intimately  acquainted ;  and  which  they  preferred  even 
to  an  elegant  Tower  musket,  weighing  only  fifteen 
pounds  without  the  bayonet,  so  long  as  there  was  some- 
thing in  front  of  them  on  which  to  rest  their  barrel.1 

Prescott  made  his  way  by  the  aid  of  dark  lanterns 
over  Bunker's  Hill,  which  at  the  highest  point  rose  but  a 
hundred  and  ten  feet  above  the  level  of  the  sea.  He 
halted  his  men,  further  to  the  eastward,  on  a  still  lower 
spur  of  the  same  upland.  They  looked  straight  down 
on  the  lights  of  Charlestown  ;  and  they  stood  within 
twelve  hundred  yards  of  the  Boston  batteries,  and  nearer 
yet  to  the  men-of-war  which  lay  in  the  channel.  Lines 
of  fortification  were  marked  out ;  arms  were  stacked ; 
and  spades  and  pickaxes  distributed.  Farmers  and 
farm-hands  wanted  no  teaching  for  that  part  of  the  busi- 
ness ;  and  every  one  except  the  sentries,  officers  and 
soldiers  alike,  fell  to  work  in  silence,  and  with  extraordi- 
nary speed.  When  day  broke,  —  and,  on  the  seventeenth 
of  June,  it  was  not  long  in  appearing,  —  the  morning 
watch  on  the  British  vessels  discovered  an  intrenchment 
six  feet  high  where  overnight  there  had  been  a  smooth 
pasture.  The  ships,  and  the  guns  ashore,  concentrated 

1  Lieutenant  Clarke  relates  that  some  of  the  guns,  which  his  men  picked 
up  in  the  captured  redoubt,  were  near  seven  feet  long  ;  but  the  statement, 
though  proceeding  from  a  credible  eye-witness,  appeared  to  require  con- 
firmation before  it  could  be  inserted  in  the  narrative.  That  confirmation 
is  given  by  an  American  colonel,  who  wrote :  "  The  arms  are  most  of  them 
good  fowling-pieces,  but  unfit  for  war,  some  of  them  being  no  less  than 
seven  feet."  Robert  Livingston  to  Lord  Stirling;  June  II,  1776. 


BUNKER'S  HILL  303 

their  fire  upon  the  little  redoubt,  which  measured  fifty 
yards  on  its  longest  face.  The  noise  was  terrific,  for  the 
part  of  the  squadron  which  was  engaged  carried  eighty 
cannon  on  a  broadside ;  and,  as  the  forenoon  went  on, 
the  flood-tide  brought  with  it  several  floating  batteries 
which  took  up  their  position  within  easy  range.  The 
Americans,  who  had  not  the  means  of  replying,  liked 
it  little  at  first;  but  Prescott,  on  the  pretence  that  he 
wanted  a  better  point  of  view  from  which  to  superintend 
his  people  as  they  worked  inside  the  wall,  sauntered 
round  the  top  of  the  parapet,  giving  directions  where  to 
place  the  gun-platforms,  and  bantering  those  who  were 
not  as  handy  with  the  saw  as  they  had  been  with  the 
shovel.  A  Royal  general  noticed  him  in  his  blue 
coat  and  three-cornered  hat,  and  asked  whether  he 
would  fight.  The  person  to  whom,  as  it  happened,  the 
Englishman  applied  for  his  information  was  Prescott's 
own  brother-in-law ;  who  asseverated  with  a  great  oath 
that  on  that  point  he  would  answer  in  the  affirmative  for 
his  kinsman.  More  quietly  worded,  but  sincere  and 
eager,  testimony  with  regard  to  the  part  played  by 
Prescott  was  given  in  much  later  years  by  David  How  of 
Haverhill  in  Massachusetts.  How  had  been  currying 
leather  in  a  small  way  before  he  joined  the  American 
army  in  1775,  and  was  still  currying  leather  on  a  large 
scale  in  1842.  A  few  months  before  his  death  the  old 
man  was  asked  about  his  experiences  inside  the  redoubt. 
"  I  tell  ye,"  he  cried,  "  that  if  it  had  not  been  for  Colonel 
Prescott  there  would  have  been  no  fight.  He  was  all 
night,  and  all  the  morning,  talking  to  the  soldiers,  and 
moving  about  with  his  sword  among  them  in  such  a  way 
that  they  all  felt  like  fight" 

If  the  cannonade  had  driven  the  Americans  from  their 
works,  there  would  have  been  bitter  disappointment  in 
the  British  garrison.  Something  was  said  at  head- 
quarters about  landing  a  force  on  Charlestown  Neck, 
and  so  taking  the  colonists  in  the  rear.  Something  was 
said  about  starving  them  into  surrender  by  stationing 
gunboats  on  either  flank  of  the  isthmus,  which  was  only 


304  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

a  hundred  yards  in  breadth,  and  had  no  protection 
against  a  cross-fire.  One  or  the  other  of  the  two  courses 
would  have  been  tactically  correct,  and  our  officers  owed 
it  to  their  military  conscience  to  make  a  pretence  of  dis- 
cussing them ;  but  neither  the  generals  nor  the  army 
were  in  a  mood  to  wait.  To  win  without  fighting  had 
no  attraction  for  men  who  on  the  last  occasion  had 
fought  without  winning.  Our  troops  were  eager  to 
try  conclusions  at  the  earliest  moment,  and  under  diffi- 
culties which  would  enable  them  to  show  their  mettle. 
As  soon  as  it  was  known  that  there  were  fortifications 
to  attack,  the  resolution  to  approach  them  in  front  was 
automatic,  and  all  but  unanimous.  By  one  o'clock  of 
the  day  four  entire  regiments,  and  twenty  companies  of 
grenadiers  and  light  infantry,  had  landed  on  the  extreme 
East  of  the  peninsula,  to  the  North  of  Charlestown. 
Howe,  who  was  in  command,  after  carefully  inspecting 
the  ground  in  face  of  him,  sent  back  the  barges  for  rein- 
forcements, and  ordered  his  men  to  take  their  dinner. 
In  a  couple  of  hours  the  flotilla  returned  with  two  more 
battalions.  The  assaulting  force  was  now  between  two 
thousand,  and  twenty-five  hundred,  strong  ;  and  soldiers 
more  full  of  heart,  and  in  more  gallant  trim,  had  never 
stepped  over  the  gunwale  of  a  boat  on  to  soil  which  they 
meant  to  make  their  own. 

It  was  high  time  for  the  Americans  also  to  demand 
help  from  their  main  army.  Some  of  the  officers  in  the 
redoubt  thought  it  their  duty  to  go  even  further,  and 
urged  Prescott  to  claim  that  those  companies  which  had 
borne  the  labour  of  the  night,  and  the  strain  of  the 
bombardment,  should  be  relieved  by  other  troops.  Not 
a  few  of  the  minute-men,  as  inexperienced  soldiers  will, 
had  left  their  bread  and  meat  behind  them ;  there  was 
no  water  to  be  had ;  and  the  heat  was  stifling.  But 
Prescott  would  have  none  of  it.  The  men  might  be 
hungry  and  thirsty,  and  had  already  done  a  double  turn 
of  duty  ;  but  they  had  become  accustomed  to  cannon- 
balls  ;  and,  when  it  came  to  bullets,  they  might  be 
trusted  better  than  any  newcomers  to  defend  the  fortifi- 


BUNKER'S  HILL  305 

cations  which  their  own  hands  had  raised.  Those 
fortifications  consisted  of  the  redoubt,  and  a  breastwork 
extending  a  hundred  yards  towards  the  left  of  the  posi- 
tion. From  the  end  of  the  breastwork  to  the  North  shore 
of  the  peninsula  the  country  was  open.  On  that  side 
the  British  overlapped  and  threatened  Prescott's  flank ; 
and  he  accordingly  told  off  a  detachment  of  Connecticut 
militia  to  occupy  the  vacant  interval.  They  were  soon 
joined  there  by  a  fine  New  Hampshire  regiment,  which 
came  fresh  from  camp  ;  and  the  combined  force  stationed 
themselves  along  the  foot  of  Bunker's  Hill,  well  to  the 
rear  of  the  redoubt.  They  were  covered  by  a  low  fence, 
stone  below  and  rails  above,  the  interstices  of  which 
they  had  stuffed  with  piles  of  hay.  A  poor  defence 
against  musketry,  and  none  whatever  against  cannon,  at 
all  events  it  marked  the  line  which  they  meant  to  hold. 
It  was  a  bulwark  much  of  the  same  character  as  that 
behind  which  their  descendants  stood  on  the  Cemetery 
hill  at  Gettysburg. 

When  the  fight  began,  the  colonists  mustered  fifteen 
hundred  men  ;  quite  as  many,  if  all  present  stood  their 
ground,  as  could  be  effectively  employed  along  a  front 
of  less  than  seven  hundred  paces.  They  had  six  can- 
non ;  and  generals  in  plenty,  though  none  to  spare ;  for 
it  was  a  day  on  which  good  example  could  not  be  too 
abundant.  The  military  etiquette  prevailing  in  the 
American  lines  was  not  yet  rigid  enough  to  prohibit  an 
officer  of  rank  from  taking  part  in  an  operation  outside 
the  precincts  of  his  own  command.  Seth  Pomeroy  had 
borrowed  a  mount  from  the  Commander-in-Chief ;  but 
the  cannon-fire  which  raked  Charlestown  Neck  was  so 
hot  that  he  did  not  conceive  himself  justified  in  risking 
an  animal  not  his  own  property.  His  person,  however, 
belonged  to  himself ;  so  he  walked  across  the  isthmus, 
and  up  to  the  rail-fence,  where  he  was  received  with 
cheers,  and  provided  with  a  musket.  Putnam,  who  had 
horses  of  his  own  and  never  spared  them,  was  seen  dur- 
ing the  course  of  the  afternoon  in  every  corner  of  the 
field.  Wherever  he  might  be,  he  took  his  share  of  the 

VOL.  I.  X 


306  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

danger,  and  a  great  deal  more  than  his  share  of  the  re- 
sponsibility which  was  going  a  begging.  Warren,  the 
evening  before,  had  been  in  the  Chair  of  the  Massa- 
chusetts Congress  ;  and  he  now  came  on  to  the  ground 
with  a  bad  headache,  which  was  soon  to  be  cured.  Like 
everybody  else  on  that  day,  he  fell  in  with  Putnam,  and 
asked  him  where  would  be  the  crisis  of  the  battle.  Put- 
nam directed  him  to  the  redoubt ;  and,  when  he  showed 
himself  within  the  enclosure,  Prescott  greeted  him 
warmly  and  offered  him  the  command.  But  Warren 
refused  to  take  over  a  trust  which  had  hitherto  been 
so  admirably  discharged,  and  assured  those  who  were 
within  hearing  of  him  that  he  was  only  one  of  two 
thousand  who  were  marching  to  their  assistance.  And 
thereupon,  as  a  first  instalment  of  the  promised  rein- 
forcements, he  placed  himself,  gun  in  hand,  among  the 
marksmen  who  lined  the  wall. 

He  was  just  in  time.  At  three  o'clock  the  second 
British  detachment  landed,  and  Howe  at  once  proceeded 
to  the  business  of  the  afternoon.  He  briefly  and  frankly 
explained  to  his  men  the  situation  of  the  army,  which 
nothing  would  save  except  a  victory.  "  I  shall  not,"  he 
told  them,  "  desire  one  of  you  to  go  a  step  further  than 
where  I  go  myself : "  and,  whatever  the  case  might 
have  been  where  it  was  a  promise  to  his  constituents, 
when  Howe  spoke  as  a  soldier  he  acted  up  to  what  he 
said.  He  then  marched  straight  at  the  rail-fence,  with 
the  grenadiers  and  the  light  infantry  behind  him.  The 
Marines  and  the  Forty-seventh  Regiment  advanced  upon 
the  redoubt;  while  the  breastwork  was  assaulted  by 
the  Forty-third  and  the  Fifty-second,  numbers  which 
are  indissolubly  linked  in  the  memory  of  those  who 
have  studied  on  Napier's  pages  the  story  of  the  Light 
Division  in  the  Peninsular  War.  Such  military  rhetoric 
as  was  employed  by  the  American  leaders  was  of  the  most 
practical  character  :  and  up  to  the  very  last  moment  they 
were  exhorting  their  people  to  aim  low,  to  fire  at  the 
handsome  coats,  and,  above  all,  to  wait  so  long  that  there 
could  be  no  mistake  between  one  uniform  and  another. 


BUNKER'S  HILL  307 

The  American  artillery  was  badly  served,  for  reasons 
which  it  subsequently  required  a  couple  of  court-mar- 
tials to  explain  for  the  benefit  of  those  who  exacted  too 
much  from  the  scientific  department  of  a  raw  army. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  round-shot  which  had  been 
brought  across  the  bay  did  not  fit  the  British  field 
pieces  ;  and  the  officer  in  charge  pronounced  the  ground 
in  his  front  so  soft  that  they  could  not  be  driven  up 
within  range  for  grape.  The  Royal  troops  moved  for- 
ward steadily,  but  all  too  slowly.  They  were  burdened 
with  full  knapsacks ;  the  hay  rose  above  their  knees ; 
they  had  fence  after  fence  to  cross;  and  they  were 
allowed  to  open  fire  too  soon.  The  colonists  would 
have  followed  the  example ;  but  their  commanders  were 
on  the  alert.  Putnam,  at  the  rail-fence,  threatened  to 
cut  down  the  next  man  who  let  his  gun  off  without 
orders  ;  and  Prescott's  officers  ran  round  the  top  of  the 
parapet,  and  kicked  up  the  muzzles  of  the  firelocks. 
When  the  discharge  came  at  last,  the  execution  done 
was  very  great.  The  British  volleys,  delivered  with 
the  regularity  of  a  full-dress  review,  were  almost  disre- 
garded by  the  colonists,  who  were  loading  under  cover, 
talking  among  themselves,  and  arranging  to  shoot,  two 
or  three  together,  at  the  same  officer.  "  Before  the  in- 
trenchments  were  forced,"  wrote  Lieutenant  Clarke  of 
the  Marines,  "  a  man  whom  the  Americans  called  a" 
Marksman,  or  Rifleman,  was  seen  standing  upon  some- 
thing near  three  feet  higher  than  the  rest  of  the  troops, 
as  their  hats  were  not  visible.  This  man  had  no  sooner 
discharged  one  musket  than  another  was  handed  to  him, 
and  continued  firing  in  that  manner  for  ten  or  twelve 
minutes.  In  that  small  space  of  time  it  is  supposed  that 
he  could  not  kill  or  wound  less  than  twenty  officers.  But 
he  soon  paid  his  tribute  ;  for,  upon  being  noticed  he  was 
killed  by  the  Grenadiers  of  the  Royal  Welsh  Fuzileers." 
The  attack  fared  badly  in  every  quarter  of  the  field. 
"  Our  light  infantry,"  another  army  letter  relates,  "were 
served  up  in  companies  against  the  grass  fence.  Most 
of  our  grenadiers  and  light  infantry,  the  moment  of  pre- 

X2 


308  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

senting  themselves,  lost  three-fourths,  and  many  nine- 
tenths,  of  their  men.  Some  had  only  eight  and  nine 
men  a  company  left;  some  only  three,  four,  and 
five."  l  Ten  minutes,  or  it  might  be  fifteen,  of  such  work, 
(for  no  one  present  had  the  curiosity  to  take  the  time,) 
showed  the  British  leaders  that  the  position  could  not  be 
carried  then  ;  and  the  less  resolute  among  them  already 
doubted  whether  it  could  be  carried  at  all.  The  assault- 
ing force  retreated;  and  Howe,  with  the  composure  of  a 
man  who  had  more  than  once  been  in  affairs  which  began 
ill  and  ended  to  his  satisfaction,  rallied  and  re-formed 
his  troops  as  soon  as  he  had  withdrawn  them  out  of 
gunshot. 

The  British  advanced  a  second  time  in  the  same  style 
as  before.  The  men  were  still  overloaded.  Again  they 
came  on  firing.  Their  opponents  noticed,  and  admired, 
the  deliberation  with  which  they  stepped  over  the  bodies 
of  their  fallen  comrades  ;  for  the  acclivity  leading  up 
to  the  American  lines,  (as  was  said  of  the  face  of  the 
hill  between  Hougoumont  and  La  Haye  Sainte  by  one 
who  had  been  at  Badajos,2)  already  resembled  rather  a 
breach  after  an  assault  than  a  portion  of  a  field  of  battle. 
The  colonists  this  time  did  not  pull  a  trigger  until  the 
British  van  was  within  forty  yards,  and  then  aimed  at 
the  waist-belts.  A  continuous  stream  of  flashes  poured 
forth  along  the  whole  extent  of  the  intrenchments,  from 
the  instant  that  the  word  was  given  to  fire,  until  the 
ground  in  front  was  cleared  of  all  except  the  dead  and 
wounded.  The  British  officers,  utterly  regardless  of 
everything  but  their  duty,  urged  the  men  forward  with 
voice  and  sword-hilt ;  and,  where  no  officers  were  left, 
the  oldest  privates  placed  themselves  in  charge  of  the 
half-sections  which  represented  what  once  had  been 
companies.  Howe,  on  the  morning  of  Quebec,  had 
stood  with  twenty-four  others  in  a  forlorn  hope  on  the 
heights  of  Abraham ;  but  he  was  more  alone  now.  He 

1  These  companies  are  stated  to  have  averaged  thirty-nine  men  at  the 
commencement  of  the  battle.     Clarke's  Narrative,^.  15. 

2  Diary  of  a  Cavalry  Officer  (Lieutenant  Colonel  Tomkinson);  p.  317, 


BUNKER'S  HILL 


309 


had  twelve  officers,  naval  and  military,  in  his  personal 
staff  at  Bunker's  Hill ;  and,  soon  or  late,  they  were  all 
shot  down.  Outside  the  works  no  one  could  live  ;  and 
it  was  evident,  almost  from  the  first,  that,  on  this  occasion 
likewise,  no  one  could  penetrate  within  them.  The 
British  regiments  once  more  fell  back  to  the  landing- 
place  :  a  repulsed  and  disordered,  but,  (to  their  honour 
be  it  spoken,)  not  a  disorganised  or  a  routed  army. 

For  they  had  that  in  them  which  raised  them  to  the 
level  of  a  feat  of  arms  to  which  it  is  not  easy,  and  per- 
haps not  even  possible,  to  recall  a  parallel.  Awful  as 
was  the  slaughter  of  Albuera,  the  contest  was  eventually 
decided  by  a  body,  however  scanty,  of  fresh  troops. 
The  cavalry  which  pierced  the  French  centre  at  Blen- 
heim, though  it  had  been  hotly  engaged,  for  the  most 
part  had  not  been  worsted.  But  at  Bunker's  Hill  every 
corps  had  been  broken ;  every  corps  had  been  decimated 
several  times  over ;  and  yet  the  same  battalions,  or  what 
was  left  of  them,  a  third  time  mounted  that  fatal  slope 
with  the  intention  of  staying  on  the  summit.1  Howe 
had  learned  his  lesson,  and  perceived  that  he  was  deal- 
ing with  adversaries  whom  it  required  something  besides 
the  manoeuvres  of  the  parade  ground  to  conquer.  And 
to  conquer,  then  and  there,  he  was  steadfastly  resolved, 
in  spite  of  the  opposition  which  respectfully  indeed, 
but  quite  openly,  made  itself  heard  around  him.  He 
ordered  the  men  to  unbuckle  and  lay  down  their  knap- 
sacks, to  press  forward  without  shooting,  and  to  rely 
on  the  bayonet  alone  until  they  were  on  the  inner  side 
of  the  wall.  He  confined  himself  to  a  mere  demon- 
stration against  the  retired  angle  within  which  the  rail- 
fence  was  situated,  and  instructed  all  his  columns  to 
converge  upon  the  breastwork  and  the  redoubt.  He 
insisted  that  the  artillery,  swamp  or  no  swamp,  should 
be  planted  where  they  could  sweep  the  fortification  with 
an  enfilading  fire.  Howe  was  loyally  obeyed,  and  ably 

1  Howe  was  reinforced  by  four  hundred  additional  Marines  in  the 
course  of  the  engagement;  but,  so  far  as  is  known,  every  regiment  which 
took  part  in  the  earlier  attacks  went  forward  the  third  time  also. 


310  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

seconded.  The  officers  who  had  remonstrated  with  him 
for  proposing  to  send  the  troops  to  what  they  described 
as  downright  butchery,  when  they  were  informed  of  his 
decision  returned  quietly  to  their  posts,  and  showed  by 
their  behaviour  that,  in  protesting  against  any  further 
bloodshed,  they  had  been  speaking  for  the  sake  of  their 
soldiers,  and  not  of  themselves.  General  Clinton  had 
assumed  the  command  of  the  left  wing,  and  was  pre- 
pared to  lead  it  into  action.  From  across  the  water  he 
had  perceived  two  regiments  standing  about  in  confusion 
on  the  beach.  He  threw  himself  into  a  boat,  revived 
their  courage,  re-arranged  their  ranks,  and  placed  him- 
self far  enough  in  their  front  for  every  one  to  see  how 
an  old  aide-de-camp  of  the  fighting  Prince  of  Brunswick 
stepped  up  a  glacis. 

It  detracted  nothing  from  the  merit  of  the  British 
that  their  undertaking  was  less  desperate  than  they 
were  aware  of.  They  advanced  for  the  third  time  in 
the  stern  belief  that  the  position  was  held  by  a  force 
superior  in  numbers  to  their  own,  and  amply  provided 
with  everything  which  the  defence  required.  But  the 
case  was  otherwise.  Behind  the  intrenchments  few 
had  bayonets ;  and,  what  was  a  much  more  serious  mat- 
ter, the  powder  horns  were  empty.  On  the  very  eve  of 
the  last  assault,  by  opening  some  cannon  cartridges, 
Prescott  contrived  to  supply  his  garrison  with  a  couple 
of  rounds  a  man,  and  bade  them  not  to  waste  a  kernel 
of  it.  Now  was  the  moment  for  the  arrival  of  those 
thousands  whom  Warren  had  announced  to  be  on  the 
way ;  but  they  were  on  the  way  still,  and  not  very  many 
ever  reached  their  destination.  The  result  was  largely 
due  to  the  absence  of  a  military  system,  which  it  re- 
mained for  a  younger  brain  than  General  Ward's  to  cre- 
ate, and  a  stronger  hand  than  his  to  impose  upon  that 
civilian  army.  The  Commander-in-Chief  never  left  his 
house ;  he  had  not  the  staff  officers  to  convey  his  orders  ; 
and  those  orders  were  given  too  late.1  Plenty  of  troops 

1  In  Colonel  Stark's  regiment,  when  the  word  came  to  turn  out  from 
their  quarters,  "  each  man  received  a  gill  cup  full  of  powder,  fifteen  balls, 


BUNKER'S  HILL  311 

marched,  but  they  did  not  start  betimes.  When  they 
reached  the  skirts  of  the  battle  they  found  no  one  with 
full  powers  to  tell  them  where  to  go,  and  to  see  that  they 
got  there; — a  circumstance  the  more  serious  because 
the  conditions  of  the  conflict  were  such  that  undisputed 
authority,  and  responsible  supervision,  were  as  much 
needed  in  the  rear  of  the  army  as  on  the  fighting  front. 
Burgoyne  had  watched  the  track  of  Clinton's  boat 
with  much  the  same  feelings  as  those  of  Fitz  Eustace 
when  he  saw  Blount  plunge  into  the  melee  at  Flodden. 
"  For  my  part,"  (thus  he  grumbled  to  one  of  his  eminent 
correspondents,)  "  the  inferiority  of  my  station  left  me  an 
almost  useless  spectator,  for  my  whole  business  lay  in 
presiding  during  part  of  the  action  over  a  cannonade." 
But,  in  truth,  he  could  not  have  been  more  usefully  oc- 
cupied. The  fire  of  his  batteries,  though  too  distant  to 
be  very  murderous,  had  a  more  decisive  influence  on 
the  fate  of  the  day  than  if  he  had  been  mowing  down 
whole  columns  of  infantry  with  grape  discharged  at 
point-blank  range.  To  march  through  a  tornado  of 
round-shot,  across  a  narrow  causeway  and  over  a  bare 
hill,  into  a  torrent  of  British  bullets  which  had  flowed 
over  the  heads  of  those  for  whom  they  were  intended, 
would  have  tried  old  and  well-led  troops.  The  specta- 
tors, who  crowded  every  coign  of  vantage  and  safety, 
averred  that  Charlestown,  whose  wooden  houses  were 
going  up  to  the  sky  in  smoke  and  flame,  added  to  the 
grandeur  of  the  panorama;  but  that  spectacle  did  not 
increase  the  attractions  of  the  East  end  of  the  peninsula 
to  those  who  approached  it  in  the  character  of  actors  in 
the  scene.  Prescott  had  shown  his  good  sense,  when 
he  pronounced  that  a  hungry  and  weary  man,  who 
had  endured  a  cannonade,  was  worth  more  than  any 

and  one  flint.  After  this  the  cartridges  were  to  be  made  up,  and  this 
occasioned  much  delay."  And  yet  they  were  the  first  to  arrive  of  all  the 
reinforcements. 

The  ammunition  was  prepared  in  camp  by  the  soldiers.  David  How 
of  Haverhill  has  left  a  military  diary  curiously  attractive  by  its  meagre 
simplicity.  "  I  have  been  a  Running  Ball  all  day  ;  "  he  says  on  one  oc- 
casion. "  I  went  to  prospeck  hill  after  I  had  done  my  Stint  Running  Ball" 


312  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

newcomer,  however  well  he  might  have  slept  and  break- 
fasted. Some  of  the  regimental  leaders  missed  their 
way.  Others  showed  hesitation,  and  heard  of  it  after, 
wards  to  their  disadvantage.  Many  of  the  privates 
sought  shelter  after  the  undignified  fashion,  or  an  ex- 
cuse for  retiring  in  the  disingenuous  pretexts,  which 
have  been  known  even  among  professional  armies  on 
some  of  the  most  famous  days  in  history.  They 
straggled,  and  dispersed  themselves  behind  rocks,  hay- 
cocks, and  apple-trees ;  or  they  went  back  in  large 
groups  around  any  of  their  comrades  who  happened  to 
be  wounded.  A  captain  of  Connecticut  militia  noticed 
that,  when  he  crossed  the  top  of  the  hill,  there  was  not 
one  company  except  his  own  in  any  kind  of  order, 
although  three  battalions  had  started  from  camp  at  or 
about  the  same  moment.  Those  battalions  might  have 
behaved  very  differently  if  the  familiar  figure  of  their 
own  General  of  Brigade,  or  Division,  had  been  there  to 
conduct  them  through  the  zone  of  panic  into  the  less  in- 
tolerable ordeal  of  actual  combat.  Putnam,  in  the  short 
intervals  between  the  attacks,  galloped  back  to  do  what 
he  could.  His  exertions,  however,  were  necessarily  in- 
termittent, and  his  title  to  command  in  some  cases  was 
disputed  and  denied.  Part  of  the  reserves  advanced  as 
far  as  the  rail-fence,  and  did  the  good  service  which 
might  be  expected  of  men  who  found  themselves  at 
their  posts  because  they  wanted  to  be  there,  and  not  be- 
cause they  were  told  to  go ;  but  the  brunt  of  the  last 
onset  mainly  fell  upon  those  who  had  been  on  the  spot 
from  the  very  first.  Sooner  or  later,  and  for  the  most 
part  all  too  late,  four  thousand  of  the  colonial  troops 
passed  over  Charlestown  Neck ;  but,  in  the  opinion  of 
Washington,  the  Americans  actually  engaged  at  any 
one  period  of  the  day  did  not  exceed  fifteen  hundred. 

The  injunctions  both  of  Prescott  and  of  Howe  were 
observed  to  the  letter.  Our  people  came  on  without  dis- 
charging a  shot ;  and  it  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that 
every  American  bullet  told.  The  front  rank  of  the  Brit- 
ish went  down  close  to  the  wall ;  and  those  who  came  next 


BUNKERS  HILL  313 

behind  them  were  not  long  in  going  over  it.  In  another 
moment  the  whole  South  side  of  the  redoubt  was  bris- 
tling with  bayonets ;  while,  with  their  backs  set  against 
the  opposite  parapet,  those  colonists,  who  had  a  pinch 
of  powder  remaining,  fired  it  off  at  the  closest  quarters. 
And  then  all  was  over.  Without  lead  or  steel,  resistance 
would  have  been  impossible  even  against  soldiers  of  a 
very  inferior  sort  to  those  who  now  were  scrambling 
across  the  earthworks  by  hundreds.  It  was  at  this 
point  of  the  battle  that  the  Fifth  Fusiliers  were  pro- 
nounced by  a  high  authority  to  have  "  behaved  the  best, 
and  suffered  the  most ;  "  which  was  already  an  old  story 
with  that  glorious  regiment.  Captain  Harris,  the  young 
fellow  who  had  been  so  keen  to  fight,  was  one  of  them  ; 
and  when  he  was  carried  off  the  field  to  be  trepanned, 
Lord  Rawdon,  no  bad  substitute,  succeeded  him  in  the 
command  of  his  company.  Among  the  foremost  was 
Major  Pitcairn,  —  the  officer  who  at  sunrise  on  the  nine- 
teenth of  April  had  given  the  word  to  fire  on  Lexington 
Common,  and  whose  noble  and  amiable  disposition  has 
been  scrupulously  recognised  by  American  historians. 
He  had  been  wounded  twice  before  in  the  course  of  the 
afternoon ;  and  he  now  died  with  four  balls  in  his  body, 
having  spent  his  latest  breath  in  calling  on  his  men  to 
show  what  the  Marines  could  do.1  Other  gallant  lead- 
ers at  Bunker's  Hill,  after  seeing  the  battle  through,  fell 
in  the  very  moment  of  success.  Colonel  Abercrombie, 
who  had  charge  of  the  Grenadiers,  was  taken  down  to 
the  boats  mortally  hurt,  and  feverishly  entreating  his 
comrades  not  to  hang  his  old  friend  Putnam,  because 
he  was  a  brave  fellow. 

Whatever  foolish  and  wrong  things  had  been  written 

1  A  youth  named  Oldfield,  who  had  attached  himself  to  Pitcairn,  also 
received  two  wounds;  but  he  lived  to  fight  again,  and  often  again,  by  sea 
and  land  as  an  officer  in  the  famous  corps  with  which  at  Bunker's  Hill  he 
had  served  as  a  volunteer.  Fourteen  years  afterwards,  at  St.  Jean  d'Acre, 
he  was  interred  in  the  trenches  by  the  French,  with  his  sword  upon  him, 
as  a  mark  of  esteem  and  admiration ;  and  Napoleon,  when  a  prisoner  on 
board  the  Northumberland,  spoke  to  the  Marine  officers  of  his  extraordi- 
nary valour. 


314  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

or  spoken  before  the  event,  there  was  no  cruelty,  and 
no  want  of  chivalry,  between  adversaries  who  had  looked 
so  close  in  each  other's  eyes.  Within  the  circuit  of  the 
rampart  the  garrison  left  more  dead  than  wounded  upon 
the  ground.  But  the  first  few  minutes  after  an  escalade 
cannot  be  regulated  by  the  laws  of  a  tournament ;  and 
determined  men,  who  resist  to  the  last,  do  so  with  the 
knowledge  that  they  must  take  their  chance  of  what 
will  happen  while  blood  is  hot,  and  the  issue  still  doubt- 
ful. The  wonder  was  that  so  many  of  the  defenders 
went  off  alive  and  free ;  but  the  dry  loose  earth  rose  in 
clouds  of  dust,  and  in  rear  of  the  redoubt  the  inter- 
mingled throng  of  friends  and  foes  was  so  dense  that 
the  British  did  not  venture  to  fire.  Prescott  walked 
quietly  through  the  tumult,  parrying  thrusts  with  his 
sword,  much  as  his  grandson's  narrative  describes  Her- 
nando  Cortes  on  a  certain  day  in  the  Great  Square  of 
Mexico.  Thirty  of  his  people  were  picked  up  by  the 
British,  badly  injured  though  still  living,  and  were  not 
claimed  as  prisoners  in  the  despatches.  On  no  occa- 
sion has  it  been  more  signally  proved  than  at  Bunker's 
Hill  how  all  but  impossible  it  is  to  capture  those  who  do 
not  wish  to  surrender.1 

It  would  have  gone  harder  with  the  men  from  the 
fortification  if  the  men  at  the  rail-fence  had  behaved 
less  stoutly.  They  stood  until  the  retiring  garrison  had 
passed  beyond  the  right  of  their  line.  Then  they  gave 
ground  with  a  coolness  and  deliberation  most  creditable 
to  young  troops  whose  flank  had  been  turned,  and  who 
were  now  learning  that  the  first  ten  minutes  of  a  retreat 
are  sometimes  more  dangerous  than  the  whole  of  a 
battle.  For  when  the  American  array  had  disentangled 
itself  from  the  mass  of  enemies,  and  presented  a  clear 
and  safe  mark,  the  worst  moment  of  the  day  began. 
The  volleys  of  the  British  infantry,  and  the  salvoes  from 

1  Gage,  in  his  official  letter,  speaks  of  "  thirty  found  wounded  in  the 
field,  three  of  which  are  since  dead."  Some  months  afterwards  special 
account  was  taken  of  ten  among  their  number  ;  and  seven  of  the  ten  were 
no  longer  alive. 


BUNKER'S  HILL  315 

ship  and  battery  in  flank  and  rear,  were  not  soon  for- 
gotten by  those  who  were  exposed  to  them.  "The 
brow  of  Bunker's  Hill,"  we  are  told,  "was  a  place  of 
great  slaughter."  It  was  there  that  Putnam,  in  lan- 
guage which  came  perilously  near  a  breach  of  the  rule 
against  swearing  in  the  Military  Regulations  of  Massa- 
chusetts, adjured  the  colonists  to  make  a  stand  and  give 
them  one  shot  more.  Pomeroy,  without  a  sword,  but 
with  a  broken  musket  in  his  hand  which  did  as  well, 
took  upon  himself  to  see  that  his  younger  countrymen 
marched  steadily  past  the  point  of  danger.  Warren 
never  left  the  redoubt ;  for  he  fell  where  he  had  fought, 
and  he  was  buried  where  he  had  fallen  :  a  bright  figure, 
passing  out  of  an  early  chapter  of  the  great  story  as  un- 
expectedly and  irrevocably  as  Mercutio  from  the  play.1 
Pomeroy  lamented  that  on  a  day  when  Warren,  —  ar- 
dent, hopeful,  and  eloquent,  —  had  fallen,  he  himself, 
"  old  and  useless,"  escaped  unhurt.  He  had  not  long 
to  wait.  Having  resigned  his  post  of  Brigadier-General, 
for  which  he  no  longer  felt  himself  fit,  Pomeroy  became 
a  regimental  officer  and,  with  his  seventy  years  upon 
him,  went  campaigning  in  the  Jerseys.  A  course  of 
bivouacs  brought  him  a  pleurisy  ;  and  he  died  for  Amer- 
ica just  as  certainly  as  if,  like  his  young  friend,  he  had 
been  shot  through  the  head  at  Bunker's  Hill. 

A  hundred  and  fifteen  Americans  lay  dead  across  the 
threshold  of  their  country.  Their  wounded  numbered 
three  hundred.  Of  six  American  cannon  one  was  with 
difficulty  dragged  back  to  Cambridge ;  and  under  the 
circumstances  even  that  was  much.  The  British  gave 
their  own  loss  at  a  thousand  and  forty,  of  whom  ninety- 
two  bore  the  King's  commission.  That  striking  dispro- 
portion between  leaders  and  followers  was  due  to  the 
gallantry  of  our  officers,  and  the  fatally  discriminating 
aim  of  the  minute-men.  It  reflected  nothing  whatever 

1  Massachusetts  Congress,  June  19,  1775:  "That  three  o'clock  be 
assigned  for  the  choice  of  a  President  of  this  Congress  in  the  room  of  the 
Honourable  Joseph  Warren,  supposed  to  be  killed  at  the  battle  of  Bunker's 
Hill." 


3l6  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

upon  the  conduct  of  the  soldiers.  Burgoyne  indeed,  in 
the  first  moment  of  surprise  and  pity,  wrote  home  that 
the  zeal  and  intrepidity  of  the  commanders  was  ill  sec- 
onded by  the  private  men,  among  whom  "  discipline,  not 
to  say  courage,  was  wanting  ;  "  but  in  after  days,  when 
something  of  the  same  kind  was  alleged  in  the  House 
of  Commons,  he  indignantly  refuted  the  charge.  It 
may  be  presumed  that,  on  thinking  it  over,  he  arrived 
at  the  conclusion  that  troops  who,  after  losing  three 
men  out  of  every  seven,  walked  up  to  the  hostile  in- 
trenchments  without  breaking  step  or  snapping  a  flint, 
had  earned  their  day's  pay  honestly,  if  ever  soldiers  did. 
Our  officers  had  looked  for  an  easy  victory,  and  had 
given  much  too  free  an  expression  to  their  anticipations. 
When  the  hour  came  they  did  not  fight  like  braggarts ; 
and  they  now  manfully  admitted  that  they  had  an  ad- 
versary with  whom  it  was  an  honour  to  measure  them- 
selves. "  Damn  the  rebels,  they  would  not  flinch,"  was 
a  form  of  words  in  which  the  most  prejudiced  subaltern 
paid  his  tribute  to  the  colonists ;  and  veterans  of  the 
royal  army  unanimously  agreed  that  the  affair  had  been 
more  serious  than  anything  which  they  had  seen  at  Min- 
den,  or  had  been  told  about  Fontenoy.1  A  string  of 
chaises  and  chariots,  sent  down  to  the  water-side  by  the 
Loyalists  of  the  City,  filed  slowly  back  through  the  streets. 
"  In  the  first  carriage  was  Major  Williams,  bleeding  and 
dying,  and  three  dead  captains  of  the  Fifty-second  Regi- 
ment. The  second  contained  four  dead  officers ;  and 
this  scene  continued  until  Sunday  morning,  before  all 
the  wounded  private  men  could  be  brought  to  Boston."2 
But  the  result  of  the  engagement  was  small  in  compari- 
son to  the  slaughter.  General  Gage  was  still  on  the 
wrong  side  of  Charlestown  Neck,  looking  across  it  at 
a  range  of  heights  stronger  by  nature,  and  much  more 
elaborately  fortified,  than  that  grass-grown  upland  which 

1  American  Archives,    from  June  18,  1775,  onward  through  July.     It 
is  noticeable,  there  and  elsewhere,  how  habitually  Minden  was  quoted  as 
the  standard  of  desperate  fighting. 

2  Lieutenant  Clarke's  Narrative. 


BUNKER'S  HILL  317 

was  strewn  so  thickly  with  the  flower  of  his  army.  It 
was  a  poor  consolation  to  know  that,  as  Nathanael  Greene 
put  it,  the  colonists  were  always  ready  to  sell  him  another 
hill  at  the  same  price.  Burgoyne  told  the  Ministry, 
plainly  and  at  once,  that  the  main  position  held  by  the 
enemy  could  not  be  carried  by  assault,  and  that,  if  the 
British  garrison  was  ever  to  leave  Boston,  it  must  go 
by  water ;  and  Howe,  who  had  been  deeper  in  the 
carnage  than  either  Gage  or  Burgoyne,  and  whose  mem- 
ory contained  a  larger  repertory  of  similar  battles  to 
compare  it  with,  was  never  the  same  man  again  as  when, 
standing  on  Charlestown  beach  among  his  picked  com- 
panies, he  gave  the  signal  for  the  first  onset.  "  The  sad 
and  impressive  experience,"  (so  we  are  told,)  "  of  this 
murderous  day  sank  deep  into  his  mind."  After  Howe 
had  succeeded  to  the  supreme  command,  it  exercised  a 
permanent  and  most  potent  influence  on  the  operations 
of  the  war.  That  joyous  confidence,  and  that  eagerness 
to  bring  matters  to  an  immediate  issue,  which  had  been 
his  most  valuable  military  endowments,  thenceforward 
were  apt  to  fail  him  at  the  very  moment  when  they  were 
especially  wanted.  Careless  as  ever  of  his  personal 
safety,  he  was  destined  to  lose  more  than  one  opportu- 
nity of  decisive  victory  by  unwillingness  to  risk  his  men's 
lives,  and  his  own  fame,  against  an  intrenchment  with 
American  riflemen  behind  it. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE  BESIEGERS.    THE  GARRISON.   NAVAL  OPERATIONS 

DEPRESSION  reigned  in  the  beleaguered  city ;  but 
there  was  no  exultation  in  the  camp  of  the  besiegers. 
In  war  as  in  politics,  the  morrow  of  an  epoch-making 
event  is  not  always  a  season  of  exhilaration.  There  is 
weariness  and  disappointment,  and  a  consciousness  that 
the  thing  has  been  incompletely  done,  and  an  uneasy 
suspicion  that  it  had  better  never  have  been  attempted. 
Bunker's  Hill,  next  morning  and  for  years  to  come,  pre- 
sented to  the  colonists  who  had  taken  a  share  in  it  the 
aspect  of  something  very  much  short  of  a  Marathon. 
Contemporary  accounts  of  the  action,  it  has  been  justly 
said,  were  in  a  tone  of  apology  or  even  of  censure.1 
The  affair  produced  a  whole  sheaf  of  court-martials  ;  no 
one  stepped  forward  to  claim  the  credit  of  it ;  and,  (what 
in  New  England  was  a  more  significant  omission,) 
more  than  one  Seventeenth  of  June  came  and  went 
without  a  proposal  being  made  to  keep  the  day  as  an 
anniversary.  The  patriots  had  expected  from  the  enter- 
prise tactical  advantages  which  it  was  not  capable  of 
yielding ;  and  they  did  not  yet  perceive  that,  in  its 
indirect  results,  it  had  been  the  making  of  their  cause. 
The  importance  of  what  had  happened  was  detected  by 
their  adversaries,  and  the  most  accurately  by  those  who 
knew  the  country  best.  A  gallant  Loyalist  of  Massa- 
chusetts, who  fought  so  well  for  King  George  that  he 
rose  to  be  a  full  General  in  the  British  army,  regarded 
Bunker's  Hill  as  a  transaction  which  controlled  every- 
thing that  followed.  "  You  could  not,"  he  would  say  to 

1  This  is  one  of  the  many  points  acutely  perceived,  and  powerfully  illus- 
trated, by  Mr.  Frothingham  in  his  Siege  of  Boston. 


THE  BESIEGERS  319 

his  friends  on  the  other  side,  "have  succeeded  without 
it.  Something  in  the  then  state  of  parties  was  indispen- 
sable to  fix  men  somewhere,  and  to  show  the  planters  of 
the  South  that  Northern  people  were  in  earnest.  That, 
that  did  the  business  for  you."  1  "  The  rebels,"  Gage 
wrote  a  week  after  the  battle,  "  are  shown  not  to  be  the 
disorderly  rabble  too  many  have  supposed.  In  all  their 
wars  against  the  French  they  have  showed  no  such  con- 
duct and  perseverance  as  they  do  now.  They  do  not  see 
that  they  have  exchanged  liberty  for  tyranny.  No  people 
were  ever  governed  more  absolutely  than  the  American 
provinces  now  are ;  and  no  reason  can  be  given  for  their 
submission  but  that  it  is  a  tyranny  which  they  have 
erected  themselves."  2 

There  was  justice  in  these  conclusions,  though  they 
were  not  expressed  in  friendly  words.  Bunker's  Hill 
had  exhibited  the  Americans  to  all  the  world  as  a  peo- 
ple to  be  courted  by  allies,  and  counted  with  by  foes ; 
and  it  had  done  them  the  yet  more  notable  service  of 
teaching  them  some  home-truths.  It  was  a  marvel  that 
so  many  armed  citizens  had  been  got  together  so  quickly, 
and  a  still  greater  marvel  that  they  had  stayed  together 
so  long.  Even  a  Cabinet  Minister  could  not  now  deny 
that  as  individuals  they  possessed  the  old  courage  of  their 
race.  They  had  displayed,  moreover,  certain  military 
qualities  of  a  new  and  special  type,  such  as  were  naturally 
developed  by  the  local  and  historical  conditions  under 
which  they  had  been  born  and  bred.  But  no  one  who 
passed  the  early  hours  of  that  summer  afternoon  on  the 
hill  over  Charlestown,  and  still  more  no  one  who  wit- 
nessed the  state  of  things  in  rear  of  the  position  and 
among  the  headquarters  staff  at  Cambridge,  could  be 
blind  to  the  conviction  that  a  great  deal  would  have  to 
be  done,  and  undone,  before  the  colonies  were  able  to 
hold  the  field  throughout  the  protracted  struggle  which 
was  now  inevitable.  The  material  was  there,  —  excel- 
lent, abundant,  and  ductile,  —  of  a  national  army  with 

1The  account  of  General  John  Coffin  in  Sabine's  Loyalists  ;  vol.  ii.,  p.  325. 
2  Gage  to  Dartmouth;   Dartmouth  MSS.,  vol.  ii.,  p.  320. 


320  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

features  of  its  own  deeply  marked ;  but  to  mould  that 
material  into  shape  was  a  task  which  would  have  to  be 
pursued  under  difficulties  of  unusual  complexity.  The 
artificer  was  already  found.  A  second  Continental  Con- 
gress had  assembled  at  Philadelphia  on  the  tenth  of 
May ;  and  Colonel  Washington,  who  from  that  day  for- 
ward attended  the  sittings  in  his  uniform,  was  Chairman 
of  all  the  Committees  appointed  to  deal  with  military 
questions.  Just  before  the  battle  took  place,  John 
Adams,  —  resolved  to  show  that  New  Englanders  would 
welcome  a  Virginian  as  their  general,  if  a  Virginian  was 
t  the  right  man,  —  proposed  that  the  assemblage  of  troops 
then  besieging  Boston  should  be  adopted  by  Congress 
as  a  Continental  Army,  and  indicated  Colonel  Washing- 
ton as  the  officer  best  fitted  to  command  it. 

The  suggestion  was  very  generally  approved,  and  in 
the  end  unanimously  accepted.  Washington  was  nom- 
inated as  chief  "  of  all  the  forces  then  raised,  or  that 
should  be  raised  thereafter,  in  the  United  Colonies,  or 
that  should  voluntarily  offer  their  service  for  the  defence 
of  American  liberty."  There  was  no  stint  in  the  terms 
of  his  commission ;  and  he  assumed  the  trust  in  a  spirit 
that  was  a  pledge  of  the  manner  in  which  he  would  ful- 
fil it.  He  did  not  make  a  pretence  of  begging  off ;  but 
once  for  all,  and  in  simple  and  solemn  terms,  he  desired 
his  colleagues  to  note  that  he  thought  himself  unequal 
to  the  charge  with  which  he  was  honoured.  He  refused 
a  salary,  but  agreed  to  take  his  actual  personal  expenses  ; 
arid  the  accounts  which  he  thenceforward  kept  for  the 
information  of  Congress  are  a  model  for  gentlemen  who 
have  nothing  in  the  world  to  do  except  to  post  up  their 
household  and  stable  books.  It  was  a  fine  example,  and 
one  which,  as  the  war  progressed  and  brought  corruption 
in  its  train,  was  every  year  more  sorely  needed.  But 
Washington,  according  to  his  own  views  of  what  made 
I  life  best  worth  having,  surrendered  that  for  which  he 
I  would  not  have  been  compensated  by  the  emoluments 
t  of  a  Marlborough.  "  I  am  now,"  he  said  to  his  brother, 
"  to  bid  adieu  to  you,  and  to  every  kind  of  domestic 


THE  BESIEGERS  321 

ease,  for  a  while.  I  am  embarked  on  a  wide  ocean, 
boundless  in  its  prospect,  and  in  which  perhaps  no  safe 
harbour  is  to  be  found."  Mrs.  Washington,  like  a  true 
wife,  took  care  to  destroy  before  her  death  whatever 
written  matter  her  husband  had  intended  for  her  eyes 
alone;  but  she  made  an  exception  in  the  case  of  the 
letter  announcing  the  news  of  his  appointment.  The 
world  can  read  that  letter  as  a  whole,  and  it  should  never 
be  read  otherwise.1 

Washington  was  the  prototype  of  those  great  American 
generals  in  the  War  of  Secession  who,  after  receiving  a 
thorough  military  education,  retired  into  civil  life  because 
they  loved  it,  or  because  the  army  in  time  of  peace  did 
not  afford  scope  for  their  energies.  Grant,  Thomas,  and 
Sherman  had  all  been  trained  at  West 'Point,  had  all 
servecl  long  enough  to  make  themselves  into  practical 
soldiers,  and  had  all  left  soldiering  in  order  to  seek  more 
congenial  or  profitable  work  in  other  callings.  Sheridan, 
alone  among  the  Federal  commanders  of  the  first  order, 
had "ajconTihuous  military  career;  but  he  was  too  young 
to  have  gone  from  the  army  before  the  Civil  War  broke 
out.  There  had  been  no  West  Point  for  Washington  ; 
but  the  school  which  he  had  attended  was  not  lax  nor 
luxurious.  Carrying  his  own  knapsack  ;  steering  through 
floating  ice  a  raft  of  logs  which  he  had  hewn  with  his 
own  hatchet;  outwitting  murderous  Indians  whom  he 
was  too  humane  to  shoot  when  he  had  them  at  his  mercy  ; 
and  then,  after  he  had  penetrated  the  secrets  of  the 
wilderness,  applying  his  knowledge  to  the  demands  of 
active  service  against  the  French  enemy,  —  he  learned 
as  much  as  his  famous  successors  ever  gathered  in  the 
classes  of  their  Academy,  or  in  their  Mexican  campaigns. 
Like  them,  he  laid  aside  his  sword,  after  he  had  proved 
it.  Like  them  he  resumed  it  at  the  call  of  duty.  Like 
them  he  was  not  less  of  a  soldier,  and  much  more  of  a 
statesman  and  administrator,  than  if  he  had  spent  the 
whole  of  his  early  manhood  in  the  superintendence  of  a 
provincial  arsenal,  or  in  the  blockhouse  of  a  frontier  fort. 

1  The  Writings  of  George  Washington,  by  Jared  Sparks  ;  vol.  iii.,  p,  2. 
VOL.  I.  Y 


322  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

When  Washington  entered  the  boundaries  of  Massa- 
chusetts it  became  evident  that  the  confidence  evinced 
towards  him  by  the  representatives  of  New  England  at 
Philadelphia  was  shared  by  the  great  majority  of  their 
countrymen.  The  Provincial  Assembly  presented  him 
with  a  congratulatory  Address,  and  did  not  hesitate  to 
admit,  in  the  most  uncompromising  language,  the  ardu- 
ous nature  of  the  work  which  he  had  before  him.  Their 
troops,  they  confessed,  were  inexperienced  and  untrained, 
and  required  to  be  instructed  in  the  most  elementary  obli- 
gations of  the  soldier.  "The  youth  of  the  army,"  they 
said,  "  are  not  impressed  with  the  absolute  necessity  of 
cleanliness  in  their  dress  and  lodging,  of  continual  exer- 
cise and  strict  temperance,  to  preserve  them  from  dis- 
eases frequently  prevailing  in  camps,  especially  among 
those  who  from  their  childhood  have  been  used  to  a 
laborious  life."  On  arriving  at  Cambridge  the  Com- 
mander-in-Chief  discovered  a  condition  of  matters  for 
which  his  recollections  of  early  colonial  warfare  had 
only  in  part  prepared  him.  "  I  found,"  he  said,  "  a 
mixed  multitude  of  people  under  very  little  discipline, 
order,  or  government."  It  was  true  that  they  knew  how 
to  shoot ;  but,  taking  the  force  round,  they  had  only  nine 
cartridges  a  man.  One  other  military  accomplishment 
they  possessed,  and  they  had  exercised  it  to  good  pur- 
pose. From  the  brigadiers  downward  they  all  could  dig  ; 
and  in  a  marvellously  short  space  of  time  they  had  thrown 
up  a  semi-circle  of  forts,  extending  over  a  front  of  ten 
miles,  which  effectually  enclosed  the  garrison  of  Boston 
on  the  side  of  the  mainland.  Their  industry  in  this  de- 
partment took  no  account  of  Sundays,  and  had  some- 
thing to  do  with  that  want  of  external  smartness  which 
attracted  the  unfavourable  attention  of  their  provincial 
Congress.  General  Putnam  for  instance,  who  held  that 
every  virtue,  even  the  second  on  the  list,  had  its  times 
and  seasons,  was  toiling  at  the  intrenchments  of  Prospect 
Hill  on  the  morning  of  the  eighteenth  of  June  in  the 
same  clothes  as  he  had  worn  on  the  sixteenth,  and 
through  the  dust  and  smoke  of  the  battle  of  the  seven- 


THE  BESIEGERS 


323 


teenth.    In  answer  to  a  sympathetic  inquirer  he  allowed 
that  he  had  not  washed  for  eight  and  forty  hours. 

But  by  the  end  of  June  the  immediate  danger  was  over. 
The  works  had  been  so  aptly  planned,  and  so  vigorously 
prosecuted,  that  the  steady  labour  of  another  week 
rendered  them  as  good  as  impregnable.  Towards  the 
North,  the  key  of  the  position  was  Prospect  Hill;  or 
Mount  Pisgah,  as  these  sons  of  Puritans  preferred  to 
call  it  when  they  surveyed  from  its  commanding  sum- 
mit that  which  they  now,  in  all  the  confidence  of  victory, 
regarded  as  the  Promised  City.  At  Roxbury  to  the  South, 
opposite  Boston  Neck,  the  ground  was  rocky,  and  the 
American  engineers  had  made  the  most  of  their  advan- 
tages. "Roxbury,"  an  observer  wrote,  "is  amazingly 
strong.  It  would  puzzle  ten  thousand  troops  to  go  through 
it."  Washington  was  able  to  muster  fifteen  thousand  sol- 
diers fit  for  duty ;  too  few,  and  too  new,  for  an  attempt 
upon  the  British  lines  ;  but,  as  long  as  he  could  keep  his 
numbers  undiminished,  amply  sufficient  to  guard  his  own. 
There  was  a  breathing  space,  and  he  turned  it  to  profit. 
In  his  first  General  Order  he  reminded  the  troops  that 
they  were  now  a  national  army.  "  It  is  to  be  hoped," 
he  wrote,  "  that  all  distinctions  of  colonies  will  be  laid 
aside,  so  that  one  and  the  same  spirit  may  animate  the 
whole,  and  the  only  contest  be  who  shall  render  the  most 
essential  service  to  the  great  common  cause  in  which 
we  are  all  engaged."  He  distributed  the  regiments  into 
brigades  and  divisions,  under  the  best  commanders 
whom  he  could  obtain ;  or  at  all  events  under  the  least 
bad  of  those  whom  he  was  obliged  to  take.  Some  gen- 
erals were  imposed  upon  him.  by  the  very  circumstances 
which  made  them  unsuitable,  or  intractable.  He  could 
not  get  quit  of  Ward,  who  was  strong  in  the  universal 
respect  acquired  by  his  all  too  ancient  services.  Charles 
Lee,  whose  pretensions  and  plausibilities,  not  yet  brought 
to  the  proof,  gained  him  an  undeserved  reputation  in 
that  homely  civilian  army,  had  usurped,  and  for  many 
months  continued  to  occupy,  the  secure  ground  of  a  man 
supposed  to  be  indispensable.  But  in  Greene  and  Putnam, 

Y  2 


324  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

Sullivan  and  Thomas,  Washington  had  coadjutors  of 
whom  the  first  became,  ere  very  long,  equal  to  any  re- 
sponsibility which  could  be  imposed  upon  him,  and  the 
others  were  thoroughly  at  home  in  every  position  below 
the  highest. 

The  motley  host,  all  alive  with  independence  and 
individuality,  was  housed  in  appropriate  fashion.  A 
pleasing  representation  of  what  he  saw  on  the  hillsides 
to  the  West  of  Boston  has  been  left  by  the  Reverend 
William  Emerson,  of  Concord :  the  member  of  a  family 
where  good  writing  was  hereditary,  and  in  which,  two 
generations  after,  it  became  united  to  lofty  thought  and 
a  teeming  imagination.  "  It  is  very  diverting,"  the  min- 
ister said,  "  to  walk  among  the  camps.  They  are  as 
different  in  their  form  as  the  owners  are  in  their  dress ; 
and  every  tent  is  a  portraiture  of  the  temper  and  taste 
of  the  persons  who  encamp  in  it.  Some  are  made  of 
boards,  and  some  of  sailcloth.  Again,  others  are  made 
of  stone  and  turf,  brick  or  brush.  Some  are  thrown  up 
in  a  hurry ;  others  curiously  wrought  with  doors  and 
windows,  done  with  wreaths  and  withes,  in  the  manner 
of  a  basket.  Some  are  your  proper  tents  and  marquees, 
looking  like  the  regular  camp  of  the  enemy.  I  think 
this  great  variety  is  rather  a  beauty  than  a  blemish  in 
the  army." 

In  the  eyes  of  the  Commander-in-Chief,  however, 
there  was  a  limit  to  the  advantages  of  the  picturesque. 
The  troops  might  lodge  themselves  according  to  their 
fancy ;  but  he  was  determined  that  their  superiors  should 
have  a  voice  in  settling  how  they  were  to  be  clothed. 
The  men  provided  their  own  raiment ;  and  they  were 
perpetually  trading  and  swapping  their  habiliments,  and 
even  their  accoutrements,  or  they  would  not  have  been 
New  Englanders.1  Those  who  possessed  a  uniform 

1  All  through  the  siege,  and  for  some  time  afterwards,  David  How's 
Diary  gives  a  minute  account  of  the  traffic  which  went  on  in  the  canton- 
ments. 

"Feb.  3,  1776.  I  drawd  a  pare  of  Breaches  out  of  the  Stores  price 
27*  6d. 


THE  BESIEGERS  325 

had  not  yet  learned  to  take  a  pride  in  it,  as  was  shown 
on  the  seventeenth  of  June  by  some  Connecticut  troops 
who  behaved  very  creditably  in  the  battle.  "  We 
marched,"  their  commander  wrote,  "  with  our  frocks 
and  trowsers  on  over  our  other  clothes,  (for  our  com- 
pany is  in  blue,  turned  up  with  red,)  for  we  were  loath 
to  expose  ourselves  by  our  dress."  Washington  re- 
ported to  Congress  that  the  provision  of  some  sort  of 
Regulation  costume  was  an  urgent  necessity.  "  A  num- 
ber of  hunting  shirts,  not  less  than  ten  thousand,  would 
remove  this  difficulty  in  the  cheapest  and  quickest  man- 
ner. I  know  nothing  in  a  speculative  view  more  trivial, 
yet  which  if  put  in  practice  would  have  a  happier  ten- 
dency to  unite  the  men,  and  abolish  those  provincial 
distinctions  which  lead  to  jealousy  and  dissatisfaction." 
Meanwhile  he  did  his  best,  with  the  store  of  finery  which 
was  at  his  disposal,  to  establish  the  outward  signs  of  a 
military  hierarchy.  Under  a  General  Order,  Serjeants 
were  to  carry  a  stripe  of  red  cloth  on  the  right  shoulder, 
and  Corporals  one  of  green.  A  field  officer  mounted  a 
red  cockade,  and  a  Captain  a  yellow  cockade.  Generals 
were  desired  to  wear  a  pink  riband,  and  Aides-de-camp 
a  green  riband ;  while  the  person  of  the  Commander-in- 
Chief  was  marked  by  a  light  blue  sash  worn  across  his 
breast  between  coat  and  waistcoat.  As  long  as  the  head 
of  the  army  was  Washington,  he  needed  no  insignia  to 
distinguish  him.  Whether  on  foot  or  in  the  saddle, 
wherever  his  blue  coat  with  buff  facings  was  seen,  —  on 
a  Sunday  parade,  or  as  he  galloped  through  the  bullets 
to  meet,  and  lead  back  into  the  fire,  a  retreating  regi- 

"  Feb.  6.  I  let  David  Chandler  have  my  Breaches  that  I  drawd  out  of 
the  Stores. 

"  Feb.  26.     I  sold  my  Cateridge  box  for  4*  &  Lawfull  money. 

"March  12.  William  Parker  made  me  a  pair  of  Half  Boots.  I  sold 
William  Parker  my  old  Half  Boots  for  Two  Shillings  and  3</. 

"  May  27.  William  Parker  made  me  a  pare  of  Shoes."  It  may  be 
mentioned  that  Parker  was  a  private  in  the  same  company  as  the  writer. 

"  June  29.  I  went  to  for  teag  "  (fatigue)  "  this  Day.  I  bought  a  pare 
of  trouses  of  Sergt-  Gamble  price  gs.  I  sold  A  pare  of  Trouses  To  Nathan 
Peabody  price  icw." 


326  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

ment,  —  he  looked,  every  one  of  his  many  inches,  the 
king  of  men  that  nature  had  made  him.  Those  on 
whom  his  countenance  was  turned  in  battle,  in  council, 
or  in  friendly  intercourse,  never  doubted  that  the  mind 
within  was  worthy  of  that  stately  presence.  "  I  was 
struck  with  General  Washington,"  wrote  Mrs.  Adams 
to  her  husband.  "  You  had  prepared  me,  but  I  thought 
the  half  was  not  told  me.  Dignity,  with  ease  and  com- 
placency, the  gentleman  and  the  soldier,  look  agreeably 
blended  in  him.  Modesty  marks  every  line  and  feature 
of  his  face." 

On  grounds  of  policy,  and  from  the  bent  of  his  dispo- 
sition, the  Commander-in-Chief  missed  no  opportunity 
for  such  spectacles  and  pageants  as  the  exigencies  of 
the  time  allowed.  "  There  is  great  overturning  in  the 
camp,"  Emerson  wrote,  "  as  to  order  and  regularity. 
New  Lor3s7~new  laws.  The  Generals  Washington  and 
Lee  are  upon  the  lines  every  day.  New  orders  from 
his  Excellency  are  read  to  the  respective  regiments 
every  morning  after  prayers."  One  of  those  Orders 
required  and  expected  of  all  officers  and  soldiers,  not 
engaged  on  actual  duty,  a  punctual  attendance  at  Divine 
Service,  to  implore  the  blessings  of  Heaven  upon  the 
means  used  for  the  public  safety  and  defence.  These 
religious  gatherings  were  occasionally  enlivened  by  a 
touch  of  genial  enthusiasm.  On  the  eighteenth  of  July 
a  message  from  Congress  was  read  to  the  troops  on 
Prospect  Hill ;  "  after  which  an  animated  and  pathetic 
address  was  made  by  the  Chaplain  to  General  Putnam's 
regiment,  and  was  succeeded  by  a  pertinent  prayer. 
General  Putnam  gave  the  signal,  and  the  whole  army 
shouted  their  loud  Amen  by  three  cheers  ;  immediately 
on  which  a  cannon  was  fired  from  the  fort,  and  the 
standard  lately  sent  to  General  Putnam  flourished  in 
the  air."  On  the  banner  was  inscribed  a  short  and 
telling  Latin  phrase,  implying  that  He  who  had  brought 
the  fathers  across  the  ocean  would  not  forget  the  chil- 
dren.1 Against  one  ceremony  which,  it  is  to  be  feared, 
1 "  Qui  Transtulit  Sustinet." 


THE  BESIEGERS  327 

was  more  popular  among  New  England  troops  than  any 
other,  Washington  set  his  face  resolutely ;  for  he  would 
not  permit  them  to  burn  the  Pope.  There  were  so  few 
Catholics  in  the  army  that  the  General  did  not  refer  to 
their  presence  as  a  reason  for  disappointing  his  soldiers 
of  a  treat  which  they  had  so  often  relished  in  their  na- 
tive villages.  He  based  his  decision  on  the  importance 
to  the  colonies  of  doing  nothing  to  alienate  the  French 
Canadians,  whose  friendship  and  alliance  the  statesmen 
at  Philadelphia  had  not  yet  despaired  of  securing. 

Washington  knew  that  something  more  than  sermons 
and  celebrations  was  required  to  make  an  aggregation 
of  human  beings  into  an  obedient  army.  "  The  strictest 
government,"  said  Mr.  Emerson,  "  is  taking  place,  and 
great  distinction  is  made  between  officers  and  soldiers. 
Every  one  is  made  to  know  his  place,  and  keep  in  it." 
Discipline  and  morality  were  maintained  and  vindicated 
with  less  of  indulgence  and  connivance,  but  with  a  far 
smaller  amount  of  cruelty,  than  prevailed  in  European 
camps.  Loose  women  were  expelled  from  the  lines, 
marauding  was  severely  checked,  and  corporal  punish- 
ments were  inflicted ;  though,  (in  a  community  where 
everything  was  regulated  on  Scriptural  precedents,)  the 
number  of  lashes  appears  never  to  have  exceeded  thirty- 
nine.1  Rogues  were  in  terror,  and  laggards  found  it 
their  interest  to  bestir  themselves ;  but  honest  fellows 
who  did  not  shirk  their  duty  enjoyed  life  as  it  never  has 
been  enjoyed  in  any  campaign,  the  familiar  details  of 

1  "  Feb.  7.  This  Day  two  men  In  Cambridge  got  a  bantering  who 
would  Drink  the  most,  and  they  Drinkd  so  much  That  one  of  them  Died 
In  About  one  houre  or  two  after. 

"  Feb.  IO.  There  was  two  women  Drumd  out  of  Camp  this  fore  noon. 
That  man  was  Buried  that  killed  himself  drinking. 

"  March  27.  There  was  four  of  Capt.  Willey's  men  Whept,  the  first  fif- 
teen stripes  for  denying  his  Deuty :  the  2d  39  stripes  for  Stealing  and  de- 
serting :  3d  10  lashes  for  getting  Drunk  and  Denying  Duty :  4d  20  lashes 
Denying  his  Duty  and  geting  Drunk. 

"  May  I.  One  of  Cap1-  Pharinton's  men  Was  whipt  20  lashes  for  being 
absent  at  rool  Call  without  Leave. 

"  May  26.  This  Night  Mical  Bary  was  whipt  39  Stripes  for  being 
absent  at  rool  Call." 


328  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

which  have  been  noted  with  equal  minuteness.  All 
arrangements  which  bore  upon  the  health  and  the  com- 
forts of  the  private  men  were  diligently  taken  in  hand 
by  their  commander.  Regimental  officers  were  made 
answerable  for  seeing  that  every  dwelling,  where  soldiers 
lived,  was  cleaned  every  morning.  Camp  kitchens  were 
built ;  very  great  care  was  given  to  the  cookery ;  and 
there  was  plenty  to  cook.  "  I  doubt  not,"  King  George 
wrote  to  Lord  Dartmouth,  "but  the  twenty  thousand 
provincials  are  a  magnified  force  occasioned  by  the  fears 
of  the  correspondent.  Should  the  numbers  prove  true 
it  would  be  highly  fortunate,  as  so  large  a  corps  must 
soon  retire  to  their  respective  homes  for  want  of  sub- 
sistence." But  there  was  very  little  prospect  of  such 
a  termination  to  the  war ;  for  the  Provincial  Assembly 
was  determined  that  the  defenders  of  the  colony  should 
be  well  on  the  right  side  of  starvation.  The  Massachu- 
setts soldier  received  every  day  a  pound  of  bread,  half 
a  pound  of  beef,  and  half  a  pound  of  pork,  together 
with  a  pint  of  milk,  a  quart  of  "good  spruce  or  malt 
beer,"  and  a  gill  of  peas  or  beans.  A  pound  and  a 
quarter  of  salt  fish  was  substituted  for  the  meat  on  one 
day  in  the  seven.  Every  week  there  were  served  out 
half  a  dozen  ounces  of  butter,  and  half  a  pint  of  vinegar, 
(if  vinegar  was  to  be  had,)  to  each  of  the  men,  and  one 
pound  of  good  common  soap  among  six  of  them.  Nor 
was  that  all.  Supplies  poured  into  the  camp  ;  and  the 
soldiers  bought  largely  and  judiciously,  eating  and  drink- 
ing freely  of  what  they  could  not  sell  again  at  a  profit. 
In  the  course  of  eight  days  the  caterer  of  a  single  mess 
purchased  three  barrels  of  cider ;  seven  bushels  of  chest- 
nuts ;  four  of  apples,  at  twelve  shillings  a  bushel ;  and 
a  wild  turkey  for  supper,  which  weighed  over  seven- 
teen pounds.1  It  may  safely  be  said  that  his  Majesty, 
who  set  a  praiseworthy  example  of  abstinence  in  the 
midst  of  a  gouty  generation,  would  as  soon  have  thought 
of  consuming  the  whole  of  the  daily  ration  which  was 

1  David  How's  Diary  ;  January  24  to  31,  1776. 


THE    GARRISON  329 

placed  before  his  rebellious  subjects  as  of  adopting  their 
political  tenets. 

Within  the  city  good  eating  was  almost  a  thing  of  the 
past.  Before  the  end  of  July  Washington  had  learned 
that  the  British  troops  were  insufficiently  and  badly  fed, 
and  that  their  health  suffered.  Captain  Stanley,  who 
as  a  son  of  Lord  Derby  would  command  the  best  which 
might  be  had  for  money,  mentioned  in  a  letter  that  he 
had  only  tasted  fresh  meat  twice  since  his  arrival  in 
Boston.1  The  wounded  men,  he  said,  recovered  very 
slowly  indeed  upon  a  diet  which,  even  if  no  battle  had 
taken  place,  would  soon  have  filled  the  hospitals.  A 
local  merchant,  —  writing  to  his  brother  with  a  latitude 
of  virulence  which,  in  times  of  danger  and  discord, 
civilian  partisans  too  often  allow  themselves,  —  stated 
positively  that,  when  the  ammunition  in  the  pouches  of 
the  rebels  on  Bunker's  Hill  was  examined,  the  balls 
were  found  to  be  poisoned ;  but  no  military  man  either 
believed,  or  repeated,  a  slander  quite  superfluous  for  the 
purpose  of  explaining  the  high  rate  of  mortality  which 
prevailed  in  the  garrison.  Our  soldiers  took  what  came 
as  the  fortune  of  war ;  and  the  fortune  of  war  was  very 
hard.  Sick  or  well,  whole  or  hurt,  they  had  nothing  to 
eat  but  salt  pork  and  peas,  with  an  occasional  meal  of 
fish.  "  An  egg  was  a  rarity,"  and  their  wretched  diet 
was  never  mended  by  so  much  as  a  vegetable  or  a  drop 
of  milk.  What  fresh  beef  there  was  in  the  town  had 
been  obtained  by  slaughtering  milch  cows  which  could 
not  have  been  kept  alive  in  the  increasing  dearth  of 
forage.  The  daily  deaths  never  sank  below  ten,  and 
sometimes  rose  to  thirty.  From  July  onwards,  to  pre- 
vent discouragement,  no  bells  were  allowed  to  toll.  As 
summer  changed  to  autumn,  and  autumn  to  winter,  the 
distress,  sharp  everywhere,  became  extreme  in  private 

1  According  to  the  American  satirists  the  Commander-in-Chief  himself 
was  no  better  off  than  his  regimental  officers.  In  a  contemporary  poem 
Gage  is  represented  as  exclaiming  :  — 

"Three  weeks  ;  — Ye  Gods !  nay,  three  long  years  it  seems 
Since  roast  beef  I  have  touched,  except  in  dreams." 


33O  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

families ;  and  those  were  not  few,  for  between  six  and 
seven  thousand  of  the  population  had  remained  in  the 
town.  Fresh  meat  in  July  cost  fifteen  pence  a  pound ; 
and  by  the  middle  of  December  that  price  had  to  be 
paid  for  salt  provisions.1  The  King's  stores  ran  so  very 
short  that  no  flour  or  pulse  could  be  spared  for  the  use  of 
non-combatants.  It  was  bitterly  cold,  and  all  the  fuel  had 
been  burned  away.  That  want  was  met  by  an  expedient 
which  excited  painful  feelings  among  the  Loyalist  exiles 
across  the  ocean,2  and  was  a  cruel  sight  indeed  for  peo- 
ple who  were  still  in  their  native  city  because  they  loved 
it  so  that  they  could  not  bear  to  leave  it.  All  of  Charles- 
town  which  had  survived  the  conflagration  was  first 
pulled  down,  and  issued  to  the  regiments  for  firewood ; 
and  then  the  troops  proceeded  to  help  themselves  from 
the  fences  of  the  Boston  gardens,  and  the  doors  and 
rafters  of  the  Boston  houses.  The  British  General  sent 
the  Provost  Marshal  on  his  rounds,  accompanied  by  an 
executioner,  and  armed  with  powers  to  hang  on  the  spot 
any  man  who  was  caught  in  the  act  of  wrecking  a  dwell- 
ing house ;  but  the  authorities  continued  to  do  on  a 
system  that  which  the  soldiers  had  begun  under  the  spur 
of  necessity.  A  hundred  wooden  buildings  were  marked 
for  demolition  ;  and  hatchet  and  crow-bar  were  steadily 
plied,  until  the  arrival  of  a  fleet  of  colliers  from  the 
Northern  English  ports  spared  Boston  any  further  taste 
of  the  destiny  which  had  overtaken  her  humble  neighbour 
beyond  the  ferry. 

It  was  sad  work  at  the  best ;  and  all  the  more  hate- 

1  After  the  investment  of  the  town  commenced,  Captain   Harris,  "  as 
good  a  beef-eater  as  any  belonging  to  His  Majesty,"  sorely  resented  the 
want  of  fresh  meat;  and  he  made  himself  a  garden  in  order  to  provide  the 
mess  with  vegetables.     "  Such  salad  !    Such   excellent   greens  the  young 
turnip-tops  make  !     Then  the  spinach,  and  radishes,  with  the  cucumbers, 
beans  and  peas  promised  so  well,"  as  a  future  relish  to  the  salt  provisions. 
Before  ever  his  garden-produce  came   to  maturity,  Harris  was  seriously 
wounded  at  Bunker's  Hill.    "  As  a  sick  person,"  he  then  wrote,  "I  am  con- 
fined to  broth  alone;   but  broth  of  salt  pork  !     We  ourselves  get  a  piece  of 
an  old  ox,  or  cow,  at  the  rate  of  fourteen  times  as  much  as  we  paid  last 
summer." 

2  Curwen's  Journal ;  Feb.  15,  1776. 


THE    GARRISON  331 

ful  to  Bostonians  because  it  afforded  a  pretext  for 
mortifying  the  richer  members  of  the  popular  party 
whose  circumstances  had  enabled  them  to  leave  the 
town,  and  those  poorer  patriots  who  had  no  choice  but 
to  stay  there.  A  fine  old  elm,  which  went  by  the  name 
of  Liberty  Tree,  had  during  ten  years  served  the  public 
as  a  rallying  place  for  political  gatherings.  Fourteen 
cords  of  firewood  were  now  obtained  from  the  ven- 
erable trunk.  Sons  of  Liberty,  all  the  continent  over, 
consoled  themselves  by  knowing,  or  at  all  events  by 
believing,  that  a  soldier  had  met  his  death  in  falling 
from  the  branches  while  engaged  upon  what  they  re- 
garded as  an  act  of  sacrilege.1  It  was  perhaps  too  much 
to  expect  that  the  noteworthy  tree  would  be  spared 
in  the  hour  of  retribution  by  redcoats  who  had  so 
often  been  roundly  abused  beneath  its  spreading  foli- 
age; but  far  worse  things  were  done  with  much  less  ex- 
cuse. The  old  North  Church  had  stood  for  a  hundred 
years,  and,  relatively  to  the  duration  of  the  city,  was  as 
much  a  piece  of  antiquity  as  St.  Albans  Abbey  or 
Beverley  Minster.  It  was  now  taken  down  and  sent  in 
smoke,  with  all  its  memories  and  associations,  up  the 
chimneys  of  a  hundred  barrack-rooms.  The  steeple 

1  The  catastrophe  was  celebrated  in  the  kind  of  verses  which  some- 
body at  all  times  can  be  found  to  write,  and  which,  during  a  period  of 
national  excitement,  even  sensible  men  contrive  to  read. 

"  Each,  axe  in  hand,  attacked  the  honoured  tree, 
Swearing  eternal  war  with  Liberty. 
But  e'er  it  fell,  not  mindless  of  its  wrong, 
Avenged  it  took  one  destined  head  along. 
A  Tory  soldier  on  its  topmost  limb, — 
The  genius  of  the  shade  looked  stern  at  him, 
And  marked  him  out  that  self-same  hour  to  dine 
Where  unsnuffed  lamps  burn  low  at  Pluto's  shrine." 

There  were  smaller  Liberty  Trees  in  other  quarters  of  the  city.  On 
May  4,  1766,  John  Adams  wrote  :  — 

"  Sunday.  Returning  from  meeting  this  morning  I  saw  for  the  first  time 
a  likely  young  button-wood  tree,  lately  planted  on  a  triangle  made  by 
three  roads.  The  tree  is  well  set,  well  guarded,  and  has  on  it  an  inscription, 

'  The  tree  of  Liberty,  and  cursed  is  he  who  cuts  this  tree ! ' 
What  will  be  the  consequences  of  this  thought  ?     I  hear  that  some  persons 
grumble,  and  threaten  to  girdle  it." 


332  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

of  the  West  Church,  built  of  large  timbers,  underwent 
the  same  fate. 

Little  love  was  lost  between  the  British  authorities 
and  the  minister  and  deacons  of  the  old  South  Church, 
which  had  been  frequently  lent  to  the  patriots  for  town- 
meetings.  The  parsonage  was  destroyed,  mercifully  and 
at  once  ;  but  the  church  was  treated  as  too  bad  for  burn- 
ing. The  nave  was  made  over  to  the  cavalry  as  a  place 
in  which  to  exercise  recruits  on  horse-back.  Pulpit 
and  seats  were  cut  in  pieces.  Earth  and  gravel  were 
spread  over  the  floor ;  a  leaping-bar  was  set  up  ;  the 
gallery  was  fitted  as  a  refreshment  room  for  spectators  ; 
and  the  stoves  were  fed  with  the  contents  of  a  library, 
the  pride  of  the  connection  to  whom  the  chapel  be- 
longed. The  responsibility  for  this  desecration,  justly 
or  unjustly,  was  laid  at  the  doors  of  General  Burgoyne. 
He  had  offended  a  people  with  quick  tongues,  and  long 
memories.  Two  years  afterwards,  when  he  entered 
Boston  as  a  prisoner,  he  called  the  attention  of  his 
staff  to  a  public  building  beneath  which  they  were 
passing,  as  having  been  formerly  the  residence  of  the 
Governor ;  and  a  voice  in  the  crowd  quietly  observed  that, 
when  they  got  round  the  next  corner,  they  would  see 
the  Riding-school.  Burgoyne  took  that  remark  like 
a  man  who  loved  a  jest ;  but  he  subsequently  confessed 
that  at  another  point  of  his  route,  he  had  been  for  a 
moment  disconcerted  by  learning  that  the  first  sentence 
which  he  was  known  to  have  uttered  after  reaching 
America  had  not  yet  been  forgotten.  As  the  procession 
filed  with  difficulty  through  the  ranks  of  a  populace, 
good-humoured,  but  obtrusively  curious,  an  old  lady 
called  out  from  the  top  of  a  shed  :  "  Make  way  !  Make 
way  !  Give  the  General  elbow-room  !  " 

It  was  a  miserable  life  inside  Boston  for  troops  who 
had  sailed  from  England  in  the  belief  that  they  were  to 
take  part  in  a  triumphant,  and  leisurely,  progress  through 
a  series  of  rich  and  repentant  provinces.  The  horses 
soon  became  useless  from  want  of  food ;  a  circumstance 
always  predominant  among  the  material  causes  which 


THE    GARRISON 


333 


destroy  the  efficiency  of  a  blockaded  army.  Moral 
deterioration  began  to  be  observed  among  the  soldiers, 
whose  spring  and  energy  were  slowly  and  stealthily  un- 
dermined by  the  depressing  character  of  the  existence 
which  they  were  condemned  to  lead.  No  one  could 
show  himself  outside  the  earthworks  without  having  a 
bullet  through  him  ;  and  the  men  on  guard  within  them 
carried  their  lives  in  their  hand  at  every  moment. 
Generals  bred  in  the  traditions  of  European  warfare 
complained  of  the  proceedings  of  the  colonists  as  un- 
generous and  unprofessional.  In  July  and  August  the 
Southern  riflemen  marched  into  Washington's  camp,  — 
stout  hardy  men,  in  white  frocks  and  round  hats,  —  who 
had  trudged  four,  five,  or  even  seven  hundred  miles  to 
have  a  shot  at  the  regulars ;  and  who  were  determined 
not  to  be  baulked  of  it  however  much  Prince  Ferdinand 
and  Marshal  de  Contades,  many  years  back  and  thou- 
sands of  miles  away,  would  have  been  shocked  at  such 
a  departure  from  the  honourable  amenities  of  a  cam- 
paign. On  the  way  North  they  had  shown  off  their 
skill  at  a  review.  One  of  their  companies,  while  ad- 
vancing in  skirmishing  order,  had  put  a  good  propor- 
tion of  balls  into  a  mark  seven  inches  broad  at  a 
distance  of  two  hundred  and  fifty  yards.  They  now 
posted  themselves  in  ambush,  five  or  six  of  them  behind 
as  many  neighbouring  trees,  and  watched  for  a  favour- 
able chance  at  a  British  sentry  as  they  had  been  accus- 
tomed to  wait  upon  the  movements  of  a  deer  in  the 
forests  of  South  Carolina. 

Cooped  up  within  two  promontories,  which  were  like 
small  islands  without  the  security  of  an  insular  position, 
our  soldiers  lost  their  health  and  spirits,  and  after  a 
while  something  of  their  self-respect.  Scurvy  showed 
itself;  the  smallpox  raged  in  the  streets  and  cantonments ; 
and  the  British  commanders  were  of  opinion  that  Wash- 
ington, on  that  ground  alone,  even  if  he  had  not  still 
better  reasons,  would  think  twice  and  thrice  before  he 
should  assault  the  town.  When  winter  was  half  over 
the  rank  and  file  no  longer  retained  the  smart  appear- 


334  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

ance  which  was  then,  even  more  than  now,  the  delight 
of  regimental  officers.  Hats  without  binding,  and  shirts 
without  frills  ;  unpowdered  hair,  unwashed  linen,  and 
unbuttoned  gaiters,  formed  the  subjects  of  denunciation 
in  General  Orders ;  and,  that  nothing  might  be  wanting, 
some  of  the  privates  went  so  far  as  to  borrow  from  the 
enemy  that  habit  which  was  the  least  worthy  of  imita- 
tion, and  chewed  tobacco  when  they  came  on  duty. 
The  British  Commander-in-Chief  was  far  from  indiffer- 
ent to  these  deviations  from  the  recognised  standard 
of  military  perfection  ;  and  he  was  stern  and  inflexible 
when  the  demoralisation,  of  which  they  were  the  symp- 
toms, took  the  shape  of  violence  and  spoliation  directed 
against  the  inhabitants  of  the  city.  Subordination  was 
preserved,  and  crime  kept  in  check,  by  that  form  of 
punishment  which  had  become  so  much  of  an  institu- 
tion in  our  fighting  services  that  officers,  who  otherwise 
were  neither  unjust  nor  unkindly,  altogether  lost  sight 
of  the  distinction  between  severity  and  barbarity.  Sen- 
tences were  passed,  and  carried  out,  of  four  hundred, 
six  hundred,  one  thousand  lashes. 

There  was  one  General  in  Boston  who  viewed  these 
excesses  of  rigour  with  disapprobation.  Burgoyne  held 
that  harshness  was  seldom  required  for  the  government 
of  men  who  were  habitually  treated  by  their  superiors 
with  discrimination  and  sympathy.  He  hated  flogging. 
Wherever  he  commanded,  he  exercised  his  artistic  in- 
genuity in  order  to  find  a  substitute  for  that  penalty  ; 
and  when,  according  to  the  ideas  of  the  time,  it  could 
not  be  dispensed  with,  he  took  care  that  it  was  inflicted 
in  a  measure  carefully  regulated  by  the  gravity  of  the 
offence.  A  splendid  disciplinarian  of  the  right  sort,  he 
kept  his  officers  in  order,  and  they  liked  him  all  the 
better  for  it.  He  had  learned  by  experience  that  that 
was  the  surest  method  of  keeping  order  among  the 
privates.  According  to  Burgoyne,  the  captain  and  the 
subalterns  between  them  should  be  acquainted  with 
the  disposition  and  the  merits  of  every  man  in  the  com- 
pany, and  were  not  to  be  contented  with  noting  down 


THE   GARRISON  335 

his  height,  the  girth  of  his  chest,  and  the  number  of 
times  his  name  had  appeared  on  the  defaulters'  list.  "To 
succeed,"  he  said,  "  where  minds  are  to  be  wrought  upon 
requires  both  discernment  and  labour.  Admitting  that 
English  soldiers  are  to  be  treated  as  thinking  beings,  the 
reason  will  appear  of  getting  insight  into  the  character 
of  each  particular  man,  and  proportioning  accordingly 
the  degrees  of  punishment  and  encouragement."  l 

Burgoyne  now  did  his  best  to  divert  the  monotony  of 
the  siege,  and  to  show  the  troops  that,  since  good  vict- 
uals had  run  short,  their  superiors  were  all  the  more 
anxious  to  cater  for  their  amusement.  Faneuil  Hall, 
where  the  people  had  assembled  both  after  the  Boston 
Massacre,  and  before  the  destruction  of  the  tea,  was 
converted  into  a  theatre.  The  idea  of  turning  the  cradle 
of  liberty  to  such  a  use  did  not  escape  censorious  com- 
ment; but  it  must  be  remembered  that  Boston  was  a 
city  where  it  was  not  easy  to  find  any  capacious  build- 
ing, sacred  or  profane,  in  which  a  political  meeting  had 
never  been  held.  The  company  gave  the  tragedy  of 
Tamerlane ;  some  modern  comedies ;  and  a  piece  of  oc- 
casion entitled  the  Blockade,  in  which  the  person  of 
Washington  was  caricatured  with  a  flippancy  which  the 
course  of  events  soon  rendered  unfashionable  even 
among  his  adversaries.  Burgoyne  contributed  a  pro- 
logue, spoken  by  a  very  young  nobleman  who  had  dis- 
tinguished himself  on  the  seventeenth  of  June.  "  Lord 
Rawdon,"  said  Burgoyne,  "  behaved  to  a  charm.  His 
name  is  established  for  life."  That  life  was  long,  and 
so  varied  and  stirring  that  it  reads  like  the  story  of  as 
many  separate  men  as  the  three  names  by  which  he, 
who  lived  it,  was  successively  called.  Always  to  the 
front  in  a  fight,  and  the  last  in  a  retreat,  Lord  Rawdon 
proved  himself  a  brilliant  and  successful  partisan  leader 

1  Burgoyne,  in  the  fulness  of  time,  had  an  able  biographer  in  the  late 
Mr.  Edward  Barrington  de  Fonblanque.  Mr.  de  Fonblanque  was  in  our 
own  days  a  wise,  perfectly  informed,  and,  (for  he  was  a  permanent  official 
in  the  War  Department,)  a  singularly  courageous,  military  reformer.  He 
wrote  quite  as  well  as  might  be  expected  from  a  nephew  of  the  famous  editor 
of  the  "  Examiner." 


336  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

in  the  war  which  now  was  opening.  As  Lord  Moira  he 
was  an  orator  for  many  a  long  year  at  Westminster, 
and  in  the  House  of  Peers  of  Ireland,  as  long  as  Ireland 
had  one ;  a  prominent  and  a  popular  statesman  ;  and  a 
good  friend  of  Fox  and  of  liberty,  at  a  time  when  they 
both  wanted  friends  badly.  And  far  into  the  next  cen- 
tury, as  a  Governor-General  too  old  to  lead  his  own 
armies,  Lord  Hastings  organised  conquest  on  a  scale 
which  dazzled  his  fellow-countrymen,  and  terrified  his  em- 
ployers on  the  board  of  the  East  India  Company.  After 
he  had  taught  a  lesson  to  Nepaul,  and  had  finally  and 
effectually  broken  the  power  of  the  Mahrattas,  —  per- 
haps the  greatest  single  service  which  our  rule  has 
conferred  on  our  Eastern  dependency,  —  it  may  well  be 
believed  that  he  but  dimly  remembered  what  his  sensa- 
tions were  when  he  found  himself  on  the  right  side  of 
the  breastwork  at  Bunker's  Hill,  with  two  bullet  holes  in 
his  hat,  and  his  reputation  made. 

George  the  Third  was  not  long  in  showing  what  he 
considered  to  be  the  practical  value  of  the  victory  which 
his  troops  had  gained.  As  soon  as  the  news  reached 
Kew  he  at  once  desired  that  General  Gage  should  turn 
over  the  command  to  Howe,  and  sail  for  England  in 
order  to  inform  the  Ministry  as  to  what  supplies  and 
reinforcements  the  army  wanted  for  carrying  on  the 
next  campaign.  It  was  a  kindly  pretext,  devised  to 
spare  the  feelings  of  an  unprofitable,  but  a  faithful  and  a 
brave,  servant.1  In  recalling  that  ill-starred  commander, 
the  King  acted  on  his  own  first,  and  most  just,  impres- 
sions. He  made  up  his  mind  without  waiting  to  read  a 
letter  containing  Burgoyne's  enumeration  of  the  points 
wherein  Gage  failed  to  resemble  Julius  Caesar,  especially 
in  the  wise  munificence  with  which  the  great  Roman 
dispensed  public  money  to  his  deserving  lieutenants. 
Burgoyne  himself  went  home  in  November,  having 
been  summoned  back  by  royal  command  because  his 
advice  was  really  wanted.  Before,  however,  the  two 

1  Not  very  long  ago  a  gold  medal,  presented  to  Gage  by  the  Duke  oi 
Cumberland  after  Culloden,  was  sold  at  auction  for  z^ol. 


NAVAL    OPERATIONS  337 

Generals  departed  from  Boston  they  were  engaged  on 
one  more  joint  literary  undertaking.  Washington  had 
addressed  to  the  British  Commander-in-Chief  a  remon- 
strance against  the  denial  to  American  officers,  who  had 
been  taken  prisoners,  of  the  privileges  and  alleviations 
due  to  their  rank.  Gage's  reply  was  worded  by  Bur- 
goyne.  "  Britons,"  he  wrote,  "  ever  pre-eminent  in 
mercy,  have  overlooked  the  criminal  in  the  captive. 
Your  prisoners,  whose  lives  by  the  law  of  the  land  are 
destined  to  the  cord,  have  hitherto  been  treated  with 
care  and  kindness ;  —  indiscriminately,  it  is  true,  for  I 
acknowledge  no  rank  that  is  not  derived  from  the  King." 
The  author  might  well  have  stopped  here  ;  but  the  op- 
portunity was  irresistible,  and  he  proceeded  to  inflict  upon 
Washington,  as  a  person  only  too  likely  to  need  it,  a  lec- 
ture on  the  obligation  of  scrupulous  truthfulness.  When 
the  rough  copy  had  been  fairly  written  out,  the  letter  was 
addressed  to  George  Washington,  Esquire ;  and  the 
notoriety  obtained  by  this  superscription  is  the  cause  that 
the  effusion  itself,  unfortunately  for  Burgoyne,  has  been 
more  read  than  all  his  dramas  and  epilogues  together. 

The  authorities  in  England  had  not  foreseen  the  pri- 
vations which  our  troops  in  Boston  were  so  early  called 
upon  to  endure.  It  was  difficult  to  understand  that  the 
army  of  a  great  sea-power,  strongly  established  in  a  sea- 
port town,  would  at  the  very  commencement  of  hostili- 
ties be  faring  no  better  than  the  sailors  on  board  an 
ill-found  East  Indiaman  in  the  last  days  of  a  long  voyage. 
The  crops  and  live-stock,  on  the  islands  alone,  might  have 
been  counted  upon  to  stave  off  scurvy  until  such  time 
as  the  harbour  was  crowded  with  provision-ships  attracted 
from  far  and  near  by  the  prospect  of  a  splendid  market. 
But,  upon  her  own  element,  Great  Britain  was  poorly 
served ;  and,  in  a  species  of  warfare  where  personal  quali- 
ties went  for  everything,  the  skill,  the  energy,  and  the 
daring  were  to  a  preponderating  degree  on  the  side  of 
the  insurgents.  On  the  fifteenth  of  July  the  colonels  of 
American  regiments  were  directed  to  report  the  names 

VOL.  I.  Z 


338  THE ,  AMERICAN  RE  VOL  UTIOAT 

of  men  in  their  respective  corps  who  were  expert  in  the 
management  of  whaleboats.1  The  House  of  Commons 
which,  in  spite  of  all  that  Charles  Fox  could  say,  had 
insisted  on  driving  New  England  fishermen  from  the 
prosecution  of  their  calling,  had  made  it  certain  that  the 
list  of  the  volunteers  would  in  every  case  be  a  long  one. 
A  large  fleet  of  these  boats  had  already  been  brought 
overland  from  Cape  Cod,  and  from  the  towns  lying  be- 
tween that  point  and  Boston.  The  vessels  were  fitted 
out  in  the  Cambridge,  and  the  Mystic,  rivers,  and  before 
another  week  was  over  they  were  busy  in  the  bay. 
Thenceforward  the  men  in  the  garrison  got  no  fresh 
food,  and  the  horses  neither  fresh  nor  dry.  The  colo- 
nists seized  what  remained  of  the  flocks  and  herds. 
They  cut  the  standing  grass,  and  loaded  up  their  barges 
from  the  hay-ricks.  They  came  off  the  best  in  their  en- 
counters with  the  British  soldier,  who  could  do  himself 
little  justice  in  operations  for  which  he  had  not  been 
trained ;  and  in  which,  as  he  complained,  assistance  and 
guidance  did  not  come  from  the  quarter  where  he  had  a 
right  to  look  for  them.  "  The  Admiral,"  so  a  General 
wrote,  "  must  take  to  himself  a  great  share  of  our  inac- 
tivity, our  disgrace,  and  our  distress.  The  glaring  facts 
are  not  to  be  concealed  ;  that  many  vessels  have  been 
taken,  officers  killed,  men  made  prisoners ;  that  large 
numbers  of  swift  boats  have  been  supplied  to  the  enemy, 
in  which  they  have  insulted  and  plundered  islands  im- 
mediately under  the  protection  of  our  ships,  and  at  noon- 
day landed  in  force  and  set  fire  to  the  light-house  almost 
under  the  guns  of  two  or  three  men  of  war."  2 

For  the  British  squadron  was  not  efficient.      It  had 
been  put  in  commission,  and  despatched  to  America, 

1  American  Archives.     Writings  of  George  Washington;  vol.  iii.,  Ap- 
pendix X. 

2  When  Judge  Curwen,  the  Massachusetts  Loyalist,  was  travelling  in  the 
West  of  England,  they  pointed  out  to  him  "  the  seat  of  the  well-known 
Admiral  Graves,  whose    base    unworthy  conduct  in  America  has  justly 
brought  the  curses  of  the  people  on  his  head,  displeased  his  sovereign  and 
the  Ministry,  and  rendered  himself  the  contempt  of  all."     Samuel  Czir- 
wtri 's  Journal ;  October  18,  1776. 


NAVAL    OPERATIONS  339 

under  an  impression  that  its  duties  would  be  confined 
to  warning  merchantmen  not  to  enter  the  harbour  of 
Boston,  and  to  intimidating  the  idle  and  famished  mari- 
ners who  crowded  her  quays  by  the  rows  of  cannon 
which  protruded  from  its  portholes.  Too  few  sloops 
and  gun-boats  had  been  provided ;  and  the  crews  both 
of  large  ships  and  small  were  on  a  peace  establishment 
which,  (before  the  days  of  Continuous  Service,)  fell 
much  below  the  complements  carried  in  time  of  war. 
The  belief  that  America  would  take  her  punishment 
submissively  was  an  article  of  the  Ministerial  creed 
which  no  one  at  the  Board  of  Admiralty  ventured  to 
dispute.  As  one  very  serious  consequence  of  that  delu- 
sion, the  fleet,  and  not  a  few  of  the  vessels  composing 
it,  were  indifferently  commanded.  Unaware  that  he 
had  already  to  deal  with  an  active  and  amphibious  rebel- 
lion, and  that  several  great  wars  were  in  the  near  future, 
the  Earl  of  Sandwich  gave  full  scope  to  private  and  po- 
litical favouritism  in  his  management  of  the  Service 
for  whose  condition,  and  in  no  small  degree  for  whose 
honour,  he  was  responsible.  Clever  and  industrious,  he 
had  the  Navy  List  by  heart ;  and  he  knew  the  opinions, 
and  the  family  and  social  connections,  of  his  Admirals 
and  Post-Captains  as  familiarly  and  thoroughly  as  ever 
Mr.  John  Robinson  knew  his  Members  of  Parliament. 
Eminent  officers,  who  held  with  Rockingham,  were  not 
in  request  at  Whitehall ;  and  there  was  a  still  blacker 
mark  against  the  names  of  those  veterans  who  had  illus- 
trated by  their  achievements  the  Ministry  of  Lord  Chat- 
ham, and  who  repaid  his  gratitude  and  esteem  with  a 
personal  loyalty  which  cost  them  dear.1 

Their  place  was  taken  by  men  of  a  much  lower  order ; 
among  whom  the  two  flag  officers  successively  appointed 
to  the  American  station  were  conspicuous,  the  one  by 
his  insolence  and  indiscretion,  and  the  other  by  his 

1  Captain  Mahan,  in  his  account  of  the  operations  at  sea  between  1775 
and  1783,  remarks  that,  with  the  notable  exception  of  Rodney,  almost  all 
the  distinguished  admirals  of  the  time  were  Whigs;  —  "  a  fact  unfortunate 
for  the  naval  power  of  England. " 

22 


34O  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

incompetency.  Admiral  Montagu  had  done  a  great  deal 
to  provoke  the  rebellion,  and  Admiral  Graves  did  noth- 
ing whatever  to  quell  it.  "  It  may  be  asked  in  England," 
said  Burgoyne,  "  what  is  the  admiral  doing  ?  I  wish  I 
were  able  to  answer  that  question  satisfactorily ;  but  I 
can  only  say  what  he  is  not  doing."  The  array  of  in- 
stances by  which  charges  of  procrastination,  want  of 
spirit,  and  professional  incapacity  were  supported  would 
have  been  formidable  in  the  hands  of  any  accuser ;  and, 
as  unfolded  by  Burgoyne,  the  indictment  was  as  porten- 
tous in  length  as  it  was  damning  in  force  and  accuracy.1 
But  nothing  that  was  done  or  neglected  in  American 
waters  had  escaped  the  eye  of  a  master  who  never  par- 
doned slackness  in  himself  or  others.  "  I  do  think  the 
Admiral's  removal  as  necessary,  if  what  is  reported  is 
founded,  as  the  mild  General's."  So  the  King  wrote 
to  Lord  North  in  the  summer ;  and,  before  the  winter 
was  through,  Graves  had  been  deprived  of  his  com- 
mand. He  was  preceded  to  England  by  the  news,  or 
it  may  be  the  rumour,  of  the  only  bit  of  fighting  in  which 
he  was  personally  engaged,  —  a  scuffle  in  the  streets  of 
Boston  with  an  official  of  the  revenue.  He  considered 
himself  to  have  been  badly  treated  by  the  Government, 
and  evinced  his  resentment  in  a  manner  which  was 
honourable  to  him.  Having  refused  a  lucrative  post  on 
shore,  he  passed  the  short  remainder  of  his  days  in  a  re- 
tirement which  he  made  it  to  be  understood  that  nothing 
except  a  call  to  active  service  would  induce  him  to  quit.2 
Before  the  Admiral  received  his  letter  of  recall  the 
mischief  was  already  done.  The  colonists  had  not  been 

1  Life  and  Correspondence  of  Burgoyne,  by  E.  B.  de  Fonblanque  ;   pp. 
197,  198. 

2  Popular  report  made  out  Graves  to  be  absurd  as  well  as  unsuccessful; 
for  the  opposite  of  a  hero,  like  a  hero,  is  usually  something  of  a  mythical 
personage.     It  has  been  related  in  print  how,  on  his  elevation  to  the  peer- 
age, he  chose  a  Latin  motto  to  the  effect  that  an  eagle  does  not  stoop  to 
flies;   and  how  the  wags  translated  it  as  meaning  that  a  Vice  Admiral  need 
not  concern  himself  with  whaleboats.    As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  peerage  was 
bestowed  not  on  Samuel  Graves,  but  on  Thomas  Graves,  who  earned  it 
gloriously  on  the  First  of  June,  and  who  was  always  ready  for  anything 
which  came  in  his  way,  from  a  longboat  to  a  couple  of  three-deckers. 


NAVAL   OPERATIONS  341 

slow  to  catch  at  an  opportunity  when  the  interests  of 
Great  Britain  were  entrusted  to  a  squadron  which  was 
ill  provided,  and  worse  commanded ;  and  the  American 
navy  came  into  being  during  the  second  half  of  the 
year  1775.  The  first  vessels  sailed  beneath  the  pine-tree 
flag.  The  emblem  was  appropriately  chosen  ;  because 
the  service,  which  fought  its  earliest  battles  under  that 
ensign,  struck  its  own  roots  and  grew  up  of  itself. 
In  every  colony,  (since  all  touched  the  ocean  some- 
where,) there  were  shipowners  whose  whalers  and 
coasters  were  laid  up  in  harbour,  merchants  whose 
capital  was  producing  nothing,  and  whole  villages  of 
sea-faring  people  with  their  occupation  gone.  Rhode 
Island  had  two  cruisers  afloat  in  July ;  and  on  the  first 
of  the  same  month  the  Assembly  of  Connecticut  author- 
ised the  equipment  of  two  others.  The  Congressmen 
of  Massachusetts  had  been  the  first  to  recognise  the 
necessity  of  a  fleet;  but  Bunker's  Hill  diverted  their 
attention  to  the  war  on  land,  and  the  subject  was  allowed 
to  sleep.  Soon,  however,  the  hand  of  the  Provincial 
authorities  was  forced  by  individuals  who  put  to  sea 
without  letters  of  marque ;  and  who,  while  the  enemy 
classed  them  as  pirates,  had  not  the  status  of  privateers 
even  in  the  eyes  of  their  own  Government.  Moved  by 
the  danger  to  their  necks  which  these  adventurous 
patriots  had  cheerfully  incurred,  the  Assembly  at  Con- 
cord hastened  to  legalise  the  employment  of  armed  ships, 
and  proceeded  to  establish  a  Court  for  the  trial  and  con- 
demnation of  prizes. 

The  prime  mover  in  the  creation  of  a  national  marine 
was  the  man  most  intimately  acquainted  with  the  broad 
aspects  of  the  military  position,  and  most  deeply  con- 
cerned in  the  issue.  Washington,  outstepping  the  attri- 
butes of  his  office  in  substance,  but  careful  to  observe 
them  in  form,  directed  "  a  captain  in  the  army  of  the 
united  colonies  of  North  America  to  take  command  of 
a  detachment  of  the  said  army,  and  proceed  on  board 
the  schooner  Hannah  at  Beverley."  1  The  Congress  at 

1  The  Writings  of  George  Washington  ;  vol.  Hi.,  Appendix  X. 


342  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

Philadelphia  was  not  in  a  mood  to  get  up  a  quarrel  with 
their  General  for  exceeding  his  powers.  Urged  by  his 
importunity,  and  fired  by  his  example,  they  armed  and 
manned  six  schooners,  which  by  the  end  of  October 
were  chasing,  and  being  chased,  in  and  about  Massachu- 
setts Bay.  A  permanent  Committee,  with  John  Adams 
upon  it,  was  appointed  for  the  supervision  of  naval 
affairs ;  a  code  of  regulations  was  drawn  up  and  issued 
to  the  squadron  ;  and  skippers  and  mates  in  sufficient 
number  were  duly  commissioned  as  Captains,  and  Lieu- 
tenants, of  the  Continental  Navy.  Washington,  how- 
ever, to  all  intents  and  purposes  continued  to  act  as 
Admiral;  until  Captain  Manly  of  the  Lee  by  the  audac- 
ity of  his  enterprises  was  marked  out  to  the  judgement 
of  America  for  her  first  Commodore. 

It  was  evident  from  a  very  early  date  that  the  new 
sea-power  had  an  instinctive  grasp  of  the  good  old 
methods.  The  American  commanders  were  fully  alive 
to  the  truth  of  the  famous  proverb  which  passes  as  the 
last  word  of  military  wisdom,  though  it  is  not  certain  to 
which  of  the  world's  great  warriors  the  original  inven- 
tion of  it  should  be  attributed.  They  knew  that,  in 
order  to  make  omelettes,  eggs  must  be  broken ;  and 
that  a  captain  cannot  hope  to  bring  his  adversary's  ship 
into  port  unless  he  will  run  the  risk  of  losing  his  own. 
A  rapid  series  of  successes,  chequered  by  disaster,  formed 
a  worthy  commencement  to  the  history  of  a  navy  which 
has  always  done  an  amount  of  fighting  quite  extraordi- 
nary in  proportion  to  the  national  money  that  has  been 
spent  upon  it.  The  public  in  London,  when  it  cared  to 
visit  the  Admiralty,  was  very  soon  treated  to  a  look  at  a 
captured  pine-tree  flag ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  Manly 
alone,  to  say  nothing  of  his  consorts,  in  the  course  of 
four  months  intercepted  stores  sufficient  to  have  vict- 
ualled his  squadron  many  times  over,  and  almost  enough 
liquor  to  float  his  little  flagship.  A  vessel  laden  with  a 
hundred  butts  of  porter ;  a  brigantine  whose  cargo  in- 
cluded a  hundred  and  thirty-nine  hogsheads  of  rum,  and 
a  hundred  cases  of  right  Geneva ;  a  sloop  with  Indian 


NAVAL    OPERATIONS  343 

corn,  potatoes,  and  oats ;  two  Whitehaven  ships  with 
coal  and  potatoes;  two  large  merchantmen  carrying 
provisions  for  the  British  garrison,  —  these  were  some, 
and  by  no  means  the  most  valuable,  of  the  Commo- 
dore's prizes. 

When  the  condition  of  the  besieged  troops  became 
known  in  England,  the  Ministry  endeavoured  to  supply 
their  wants  by  means  of  a  profuse  expenditure.  Five 
thousand  oxen,  (so  it  was  computed  by  a  very  well-in- 
formed writer,)  fourteen  thousand  of  the  largest  and 
fattest  sheep,  and  a  huge  consignment  of  hogs  were 
purchased,  and  sent  out  alive.  Vegetables  of  all  kinds 
were  cured  by  a  new  process,  and  stowed  away  in  the 
holds.  Five  thousand  chaldrons  of  coal  were  shipped, 
along  with  the  very  faggots  required  to  kindle  them; 
oats,  beans,  and  hay  for  the  horses ;  and  near  half  a 
million  of  money  in  Spanish  and  Portuguese  coinage. 
The  employment  given  in  many  and  diverse  quarters  by 
this  feverish  activity;  the  shares  in  lucrative  contracts 
allotted  to  men  of  rank  and  fashion,  ignorant  of  busi- 
ness, who  had  never  before  in  their  lives  sold  anything 
except  their  votes  in  Parliament ;  the  fervent,  and  ex- 
pectant, gratitude  of  brewers  who  supplied  ten  thousand 
butts  of  strong  beer,  and  of  merchants  who  provided 
shipping  at  a  fourth  above  the  usual  rate  for  tonnage ; 
—  all  these  circumstances  added  political  strength  to 
the  Government.  But  at  that  point  the  public  advan- 
tage stopped.  The  transports  sailed  too  late  in  the 
season,  and  contrary  gales  kept  them  long  near  our 
own  shores.  The  preserved  vegetables  fermented  and 
were  thrown  overboard.  The  waves  were  so  tempestu- 
ous that  the  greater  part  of  the  animals  perished,  and 
the  tides  carried  their  carcasses  in  thousands  up  and 
down  the  Channel.  As  the  vessels  neared  their  desti- 
nation, the  periodical  winds  set  in  and  blew  full  in  their 
teeth.  Some  were  driven  off  to  the  West  Indian 
Islands.  Others  drifted  towards  the  American  coasts, 
and  were  boarded  and  plundered  in  the  creeks  to  which 
they  resorted  for  shelter.  Those  which  survived,  after 


344  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

beating  the  seas  for  three  or  four  months,  found  them- 
selves, with  leaking  sides  and  rotten  cordage,  on  the 
cruising  ground  of  a  hostile  navy  the  first  notice  of 
whose  existence  reached  them  through  a  shot  fired 
across  their  own  bows.  Time,  and  no  very  long  time, 
had  brought  about  the  due  revenges ;  and  Boston  had 
become  a  closed  port  in  a  sense  which  Parliament  never 
contemplated  or  intended.1 

The  supineness  of  the  British  naval  commanders 
during  the  first  period  of  the  war  was  less  detrimental 
to  the  royal  cause  than  their  occasional  ebullitions  of 
sinister  energy.  On  the  fifteenth  of  October,  1775, 
George  the  Third  assured  Lord  North,  in  a  sentence 
never  yet  forgotten  beyond  the  Atlantic,  that  he  would 
concur  in  any  plan  which  could  be  devised  with  the 
object  of  "distressing  America."  A  week  afterwards 
a  despatch  went  from  Downing  Street  recommending 
that  the  rebels  should  be  annoyed  by  sudden  and  un- 
expected attacks  of  their  seaboard  towns  during  the 
winter ;  and  directing  the  total  destruction  of  any  place, 
large  or  small,  in  which  the  people  assembled  in  arms, 
or  held  meetings  of  committees  or  congresses.  Charles 
the  First,  who  has  sometimes  been  called  a  tyrant,  but 
who  fought  his  civil  war  as  became  an  English  King, 
would  on  these  grounds  have  been  justified  in  utterly 
demolishing  Bristol  and  Leicester,  and,  (if  he  once  could 
have  got  inside  them,)  Norwich,  Gloucester,  Cambridge, 
and  London  itself. 

Already  something  had  been  done  in  anticipation  of 
the  Ministerial  policy.  On  the  middle  day  of  October 
Captain  Mowatt  had  sailed  into  the  port  of  Falmouth, 
in  that  part  of  Massachusetts  which  afterwards  became 
the  state  of  Maine,  and  had  poured  a  shower  of  gre- 
nades and  shells  upon  the  unprotected  streets  of  the  little 
community.  Some  wooden  houses  were  soon  in  a  blaze, 
and  Marines  were  landed  to  prevent  the  fire  from  being 
extinguished.  The  church,  the  public  buildings,  and 
three-fourths  of  the  dwellings  perished ;  all  the  vessels 

1  Annual  Register  for  1776  ;   chapter  ii.  of  the  History  of  Europe. 


NAVAL    OPERATIONS  345 

in  the  harbour  were  sunk  or  carried  off ;  and  the  inhab- 
itants were  left,  homeless  and  without  the  means  of 
escape,  to  the  approaching  rigours  of  a  Northern  win- 
ter in  that  remote,  and,  (when  the  sea  was  blockaded,) 
all  but  inaccessible  region.  The  members  of  the  Conti- 
nental Congress  were-  then  waiting  for  a  reply  to  the 
Address  in  which  they  had  appealed  to  the  King  to 
stand  their  friend,  in  spite  of  the  prejudice  and  ani- 
mosity entertained  by  Parliament  against  his  subjects 
in  America.  The  tidings  from  Falmouth  reached  Phila- 
delphia on  the  same  day  as  the  news  that  the  British 
Government  was  raising  an  army  of  German  merce- 
naries to  be  employed  against  the  revolted  colonies. 
These  two  pieces  of  intelligence,  by  their  simultaneous 
effect,  killed  outright  all  hope,  or  even  desire,  of  recon- 
ciliation. "  Brother  rebel,"  said  a  Southern  delegate  to 
one  of  his  New  England  colleagues,  "  I  am  ready  to 
declare  ourselves  independent.  We  have  now  got  a 
sufficient  answer  to  our  petition." 

The  doom  of  Falmouth  was  a  foretaste  of  what  the 
Northern  colonies  had  to  expect ;  and  the  lesson  was 
next  taught  in  another  quarter.  Norfolk,  at  the  mouth 
of  the  James  River,  had  for  many  years  been  the  seat  of 
a  brisk,  and  mutually  profitable,  trade  with  the  West 
of  Scotland  in  the  staple  commodity  of  Virginia.  Near 
sixty  thousand  hogsheads  of  tobacco  were  annually 
brought  into  the  Clyde  ;  and  most  of  them  were  shipped 
from  the  estuary  of  the  James.  The  town  was  largely 
owned  by  merchants  whose  warehouses  lined  Virginia 
Street  in  Glasgow.  Their  clerks  and  factors  formed 
that  part  of  the  population  of  Norfolk  which  was  most 
in  evidence;  especially  since  the  troubles  began,  and 
the  partisans  of  the  Revolution  had  retired  into  the 
interior  of  the  country.  These  good  Scotchmen,  if  left 
to  themselves,  would  have  lived  peaceably.  When 
forced  to  show  colours,  they  very  tardily  took  up  arms 
for  the  Crown,  and  formed  themselves  into  a  Loyal 
Militia.  Before  long,  a  force  of  native  Virginians  came 
down  from  the  upper  districts,  and  re-entered  Norfolk 


346  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

after  a  sharp  encounter  with  a  small  garrison  of  regu- 
lars. The  Loyal  Militia,  who  during  the  action  had  con- 
trived to  post  themselves  where  the  fighting  was  not, 
sought  refuge  among  the  ships  of  a  squadron  which  lay 
in  the  river,  with  Lord  Dunmore,  the  Governor  of  the 
province,  on  board.  That  nobleman,  and  the  captain  of 
the  largest  man  of  war,  laid  their  heads  together  over 
the  paper  of  Instructions  which  had  been  issued  by  the 
Government  at  home.  They  came  to  the  conclusion 
that  Norfolk  was  "  a  town  in  actual  rebellion,  accessible 
to  the  King's  ships,"  and  that  they  had  no  choice 
except  to  carry  out  the  King's  order.  Accordingly  on 
the  afternoon  of  New  Year's  day,  1776,  the  bombard- 
ment commenced.  The  pinewood  structures,  coated 
with  paint,  were  soon  alight ;  and,  favoured  by  the  wind, 
the  conflagration  spread  fast.  Wherever  the  Ameri- 
cans were  not  on  the  look-out,  a  boat's  crew  pushed  off, 
and  set  a  match  to  the  sheds  where  the  Scotch  factors 
kept  their  stores  of  an  article  which  they  intended 
eventually  to  be  burned,  but  not  by  so  wholesale  and 
unremunerative  a  process.  Sixty  cannon,  deliberately 
trained  upon  the  points  where  the  flames  were  advanc- 
ing, defeated  every  effort  to  save  the  town ;  and  the 
fire  raged  until  four-fifths  of  the  houses  were  in  ashes. 

That  lamentable  occurrence  stirred  the  calm  temper 
of  the  most  famous  of  Virginians,  and  animated  his  pre- 
cise and  severe  style;  for  the  Commander-in-Chief  of 
the  American  army  wrote  from  his  headquarters  at 
Cambridge  that  a  few  more  of  such  flaming  arguments 
as  those  which  were  exhibited  at  Falmouth  and  Norfolk 
would  secure  a  majority  in  favour  of  a  separation  be- 
tween England  and  her  colonies.  Franklin,  when 
Charlestown  was  shelled  and  destroyed,  had  pronounced 
himself  unable  to  discern  how  such  proceedings  could 
favourably  affect  those  commercial  claims  on  the  part 
of  the  mother-country  which  had  been  the  ostensible 
origin  of  the  war.  "  Britain,"  he  said,  "  must  certainly 
be  distracted.  No  tradesman  out  of  Bedlam  ever 
thought  of  increasing  the  numbers  of  his  customers  by 


NAVAL   OPERATIONS  347 

knocking  them  on  the  head,  or  of  enabling  them  to  pay 
their  debts  by  burning  their  houses."  This  specimen  of 
Franklin's  habitual  humour  was  fraught  with  as  grim  a 
purpose  as  that  which  inspired  Washington's  unwonted 
rhetoric.  The  glare  thrown  upon  the  future  by  these 
acts  of  official  arson  lighted  them  both  to  the  same  con- 
clusion. "  It  has  been  with  difficulty,"  Franklin  wrote, 
"  that  we  have  carried  another  humble  Petition  to  the 
Crown,  to  give  Britain  one  more  chance  of  recovering 
the  friendship  of  the  colonies :  which  however  she  has 
not  sense  enough  to  embrace ;  and  so  she  has  lost  them 
for  ever." 


CHAPTER   XI 

WASHINGTON.        DORCHESTER    HEIGHTS.        THE    REFUGEES. 
HOWE'S    RETIREMENT    FROM    BOSTON 

WASHINGTON,  meanwhile,  was  struggling  against  diffi- 
culties, less  hopeless  indeed  than  those  which  beset  the 
British  General,  but  of  a  character  more  unusual  in 
modern  warfare,  and  demanding  more  exceptional  quali- 
ties in  the  man  whose  duty  it  was  to  deal  with  them. 
The  royal  garrison  was  dwindling  from  disease  and  pri- 
vation ;  but  it  seemed  as  if  the  American  army  would 
melt  away  of  itself.  Within  a  week  after  Bunker's  Hill 
there  were  many  honest  militiamen  who  thought  it  an 
eminently  suitable  occasion  to  go  back  to  their  farms, 
and  get  in  the  hay,  and  possibly  the  corn,  before  the  next 
battle.  One  captain  appears  to  have  been  left  with  a 
single  file  of  soldiers.  During  the  last  ten  days  of  June 
the  Massachusetts  Committee  of  Safety  informed  the 
Selectmen  of  Bradford  that  "the  whole  of  a  company 
of  fifty  men,  save  two,  have  scandalously  deserted  the 
cause  of  their  country,  and  stained  their  own  honour  by 
leaving  the  camp,  and  returning  home."  The  circum- 
stances under  which  the  troops  had  originally  assembled 
in  that  camp  were  such  as  to  render  it  unlikely  that 
they  would  be  induced  to  remain  there  through  the 
winter.  They  had  turned  out  on  the  morning  of  Lex- 
ington to  try  their  weapons  against  the  British,  and  to 
run  their  chance  of  getting  a  bullet  back ;  but  the  idea 
had  never  crossed  the  minds  of  most  of  them  that  they 
were  mortgaging  their  services  for  a  whole  campaign, 
and  still  less  for  an  interminable  war.  They  had  taken 
up  arms  for  liberty ;  and  it  was  a  poor  beginning,  as  fat 
as  their  own  share  of  that  blessing  was  concerned,  to 

348 


WASHINGTON  349 

find  themselves  converted  from  free  citizens  into  the 
rank  and  file  of  a  standing  army  before  their  leave  had 
been  asked,  and  without  a  single  shilling  of  bounty.  A 
British  recruit  entered  on  the  military  career  with  a 
handsome  sum  in  his  pocket,  however  short  a  time  it 
might  remain  in  that  receptacle.  Even  a  Hessian,  when 
he  put  on  the  red-coat,  had  the  satisfaction  of  reflecting 
that  his  beloved  Landgrave  was  the  richer  by  seven 
guineas  a  head  for  himself  and  each  of  his  comrades ; 
but  the  American  minute-man  had  nothing  but  his  ra- 
tion, and  a  suit  of  clothes  made  of  wool  which  his  sis- 
ters had  spun.  It  was  no  wonder  that  an  invitation 
to  subscribe  the  Articles  of  War,  as  laid  down  by  the 
Continental  Congress,  met  with  scanty  response.  Both 
officers  and  men  preferred  to  keep  within  the  terms 
under  which  they  had  enlisted  in  the  military  establish- 
ments of  their  several  Provinces.  The  regiments  of 
Connecticut  and  Rhode  Island  stood  engaged  up  to  the 
first  of  December,  and  for  not  a  day  longer ;  and  no  one 
portion  of  the  entire  force  was  bound  to  serve  into  the 
coming  year.  On  the  first  of  January,  1776,  everybody 
was  free  to  go ;  and  the  lines,  which  required  fifteen 
thousand  men  to  defend  them,  would  thenceforward  be 
manned  by  a  handful  of  such  volunteers  as  did  not  care  to 
survive  their  cause,  and  were  ashamed  to  abandon  their 
general. 

Washington  had  been  born  and  trained  for  precisely 
such  a  crisis.  He  had  an  aversion  to  arbitrary  methods, 
a  keen  sense  of  what  was  due  to  others,  and  a  quiet  but 
comprehensive  sympathy  with  their  feelings.  He  knew 
that  his  countrymen  did  not  love  to  be  bullied,  and  were 
the  worst  people  in  the  world  to  entrap  or  to  overreach. 
It  was  in  vain,  (he  said,)  to  attempt  to  reason  away  the 
prejudices  of  a  whole  army.1  Instead  of  trying  to  force 
the  Articles  of  War  on  a  reluctant  and,  in  some  cases, 
a  vigorously  recalcitrant  militia,  he  resolved  to  form  a 
regular  establishment  composed  of  men  who  had  ac- 
cepted those  Articles  by  choice,  and  with  their  eyes 

1  Washington  to  the  President  of  Congress  ;  Sept.  21,  1775. 


350  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

open.  A  Committee  of  Congress  three  in  number,  of 
whom  Franklin  was  one,  repaired  to  Cambridge  in  order 
to  confer  with  delegates  chosen  by  the  New  England 
colonies.  They  found  Washington  ready  with  a  scheme 
for  raising  twenty-six  regiments,  of  soldiers  who  should 
engage  themselves  for  a  twelvemonth  certain.  He 
asked  for  twenty  thousand  infantry ;  and  the  repre- 
sentatives of  New  England  assured  him  that  he  might 
draw  thirty  thousand  from  the  Northern  provinces  alone. 
It  was  a  striking  instance  of  that  too  sanguine  Ameri- 
can temper  which  the  delays  and  rebuffs  of  war  con- 
vert, not  into  disgust  or  despair,  but  into  patience  and 
perseverance,  and  an  unalterable  determination  to  win. 
The  enrolment  of  the  new  force  began  in  the  last  week 
of  October.  At  first  the  results  were  most  discourag- 
ing. No  privates  would  enlist  in  any  corps  until  they 
knew  the  names  of  the  whole  regimental  hierarchy 
from  the  colonel  downwards ;  and,  when  it  came  to  the 
distribution  of  commissions,  the  aspirants  were  exceed- 
ingly difficult  to  please.  Where  an  officer  was  too 
patriotic  to  be  exacting,  his  colony  was  jealous  for  him. 
At  one  time  Washington  expected  that  half  of  his  cap- 
tains and  lieutenants  would  leave  him.  His  confidential 
letters  were  couched  in  scathing  terms.  "  Such  a 
dearth  of  public  spirit,"  he  wrote,  "  and  such  want  of 
virtue;  such  stock-jobbing,  and  fertility  in  all  the  low 
arts  to  obtain  advantages  of  one  kind  or  another  in  this 
great  change  of  military  arrangement,  I  never  saw 
before,  and  I  pray  God's  mercy  that  I  may  never  see 
again."  In  that  atmosphere  of  intrigue  recruiting  was 
sometimes  at  a  standstill,  and  then  for  a  while  moved 
slowly  on.  The  call  of  duty,  and  the  hope  of  distinc- 
tion, were  there  for  whatever  they  were  worth  in  each 
man's  estimation ;  but,  over  and  above  those  induce- 
ments, the  temptations  which  the  Continental  Treasury 
was  able  to  hold  forth  were  pitifully,  and  almost  patheti- 
cally, small.  The  donative  offered  to  the  praetorian 
guards  of  American  liberty  consisted  in  the  prospect  of 
a  month's  pay  in  advance,  as  soon  as  there  was  anything 


WASHINGTON 


351 


in  the  military  chest,  and  a  promise  that  at  some  period 
in  the  distant  future  they  would  be  allowed  to  buy  their 
uniforms  at  cost  price.1  During  the  first  three  weeks, 
out  of  a  group  of  eleven  battalions  of  militia,  less  than  a 
thousand  men  had  given  in  their  names.  Four  thou- 
sand at  the  most  joined,  in  and  before  November ;  and, 
when  another  month  had  elapsed,  the  whole  number  on 
the  new  establishment  was  still  below  ten  thousand,  of 
whom  one  in  every  ten  was  off  home  on  a  furlough 
which  he  had  claimed  as  a  condition  of  re-enlistment. 

That  was  the  strength  of  the  new  army  at  the  end 
of  the  year ;  and  by  that  date  the  old  army  had  been 
dissolved.  "  We  have  found  it,"  said  Washington,  "  as 
practicable  to  stop  a  torrent  as  these  people,  when  their 
time  is  up;"  and,  even  before  their  time  was  up,  the 
rank  and  file  of  the  Connecticut  Militia,  when  they 
ascertained  that  a  bounty  was  not  forthcoming,  planned 
to  march  away  in  a  body.  That  purpose  was  defeated 
by  the  firmness  of  the  General,  and  the  exertions  of 
their  own  officers,  and  not  least  by  a  spirited  and  well- 
timed  sermon  from  the  military  chaplain  of  the  colony ; 
but  no  amount  of  exhortation  or  supervision  could  pre- 
vent many  of  the  privates  belonging  to  the  corps  from 
deserting  singly,  or  in  small  parties.  Washington 
showed  a  tranquil  countenance  to  the  outside  world; 
but  beneath  the  seal  of  a  letter  he  begged  his  most  in- 
timate correspondent  to  imagine,  since  he  himself  was 
unwilling  to  describe,  the  situation  of  his  mind  during 
that  trying  interval.  It  was  no  light  burden,  (so  he 
assured  his  friend,)  to  maintain  a  post  against  the  flower 

1  A  General  Order  of  October  28,  1775,  (quoted  by  Mr.  Frothingham  in 
his  Siege  of  Boston?)  recommended  to  the  non-commissioned  officers  and 
soldiers  at  next  pay  day  to  procure  themselves  underclothing,  and  not 
coats  and  waistcoats,  as  it  was  intended  that  the  new  army  should  be 
dressed  in  uniform.  "To  effect  which  the  Congress  will  lay  in  goods  upon 
the  best  terms  they  can  be  bought  anywhere  for  ready  money,  and  will 
sell  them  to  the  soldiers  without  any  profit  ;  by  which  means  a  uniform 
will  come  cheaper  to  them  than  any  other  clothing  that  can  be  bought. 
A  number  of  tailors  will  be  immediately  set  to  work  to  make  regimentals 
for  those  brave  men  who  are  willing  at  all  hazards  to  defend  their  invalu- 
able rights  and  privileges." 


352  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

of  the  British  troops  for  six  months  together,  and  then 
to  have  one  army  disbanded,  and  another  to  be  raised, 
in  the  presence  of  the  enemy.  "  Search,"  he  wrote, 
"  the  volumes  of  history  through,  and  I  much  question 
whether  a  case  similiar  to  ours  is  to  be  found."  l 

The  depletion  of  his  ranks  was  only  one,  and  not 
the  most  painful,  of  Washington's  manifold  perplexities. 
He  was  engaged  on  a  siege,  and  the  whole  camp  did  not 
furnish  him  with  a  single  engineer.  With  no  money  in 
hand  he  was  making  an  army  at  a  distance  of  three 
hundred  miles  by  road  from  the  seat  of  government,  and 
the  treasury ;  and,  in  spite  of  his  eager  remonstrances, 
no  regular  system  of  communication  had  as  yet 
been  established  between  Cambridge  and  Philadelphia. 
Except  plenty  to  eat,  his  troops  had  little  or  nothing 
that  soldiers  wanted.  Winter  was  coming  on  fast,  and 
they  were  not  provided  with  blankets  or  firewood.  The 
Pennsylvanian  mechanics,  who  were  to  have  turned  out 
muskets  at  the  rate  of  eight  or  nine  thousand  a  month, 
fell  very  far  short  of  the  anticipations  which  ardent 
patriots  had  formed  in  the  hopeful  days  before  muskets 
had  begun  to  be  fired.  A  sentry  in  the  trenches  still 
shouldered  the  fowling  piece  which  he  had  taken  down 
from  above  the  mantel-shelf  on  the  morning  of  Lexing- 
ton. Privates  who  left  for  home  on  furlough,  and  still 
more  those  who  went  away  for  good,  could  not  bear  to 
be  parted  from  their  guns.  The  military  authorities  at 
Cambridge  would  gladly  have  bought  in  those  guns  on 
credit;  but  they  were  not  in  a  position  to  use  compul- 
sion against  men  who  still  had  owing  to  them  the  whole 
of  the  pay  which  they  had  earned.  New  recruits  for 
the  most  part  came  in  without  arms ;  and,  while  the 
regiments  were  as  yet  only  half  complete,  there  were 
not  a  hundred  muskets  in  store. 

The  moment  seemed  close  at  hand  when  it  would  no 
longer  matter  whether  the  soldier  carried  a  gun  or  a 
pitchfork.  On  the  third  of  August  account  was  taken 
of  the  stock  of  ammunition ;  and  the  magazine  was  so 

1  Washington  to  Reed  ;  Cambridge,  Jan.  4,  1 776. 


WASHINGTON 


353 


bare  that  Washington  wrote  off  at  once  to  beg  for  pow- 
der from  the  neighbouring  colonies,  assuring  them  that 
no  quantity,  however  small,  would  be  beneath  notice. 
Three  weeks  afterwards  he  detected  a  mistake  in  the 
return,  and  pronounced  the  situation  nothing  short  of 
terrible.  He  had  reckoned,  he  said,  upon  three  hundred 
quarter  casks,  and  had  but  thirty-two  barrels.  The  rains 
had  been  heavy  and  continuous,  and  the  cartridges 
which  had  already  been  served  out  were  spoiling  in  the 
pouches.  From  that  time  forwards,  under  whatever 
provocation,  the  American  batteries  were  silent;  and 
the  powder  was  reserved  for  firing  musket  balls  at  pis- 
tol distance  in  an  emergency  which  nothing  could  post- 
pone if  once  the  plight  of  the  besiegers  became  known 
to  the  British  General.1  Under  these  circumstances 
clever  men,  who  had  seen  something  of  warfare,  began 
to  discuss  the  advisability  of  having  recourse  to  very 
primitive  instruments  of  destruction.  General  Charles 
Lee  wrote  to  Franklin  in  favour  of  enlisting  pikemen, 
and  received  a  reply  urging  him  not  to  despise  even 
bows  and  arrows.  Franklin's  arguments  in  favour  of 
that  form  of  artillery  are  excellent  reading,  and  on  paper 
unanswerable  ;  but  Washington  was  proof  against  them. 
Bows  and  arrows  were  used  with  effect  on  the  side 
of  the  besiegers  by  some  Indian  warriors,  who  had  been 
trained  into  Christians  and  agriculturists  at  Dartmouth 
College  without  having  forgotten  how  to  lay  an  ambush  ; 
but  it  is  not  on  record  that  any  pale-face  went  into  bat- 
tle armed  with  a  weapon  more  antiquated  than  his  grand- 
father's firelock.  Pikes,  indeed,  which  had  not  gone 
altogether  out  of  fashion  among  European  military 
theorists,  were  manufactured  by  hundreds  with  a  view 
to  tide  the  American  cause  over  that  period  of  destitu- 
tion in  all  the  articles  that  made  up  the  equipment  of  a 
soldier.2  It  was  a  cruel  time  for  George  Washington. 

1  Washington  to  the  President  of  Congress,  II  November,  1775  ;  and 
the  retrospective  letter  of  March  31,  1776. 

2  "  The  people  employed  to  make  spears  are  desired  by  the  general  to 
make  them  thirteen  feet  in  length,  and  the  wood  part  a  good  deal  more 

VOL.  I.  2A 


354  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

"  The  reflection,"  he  wrote,  "  on  my  situation,  and  that 
of  this  army,  produces  many  an  unhappy  hour  when  all 
around  me  are  wrapt  in  sleep.  I  have  often  thought 
how  much  happier  I  should  have  been  if  I  had  taken  a 
musket  on  my  shoulder,  and  entered  the  ranks  ;  or,  (if  I 
could  have  justified  the  measure  to  posterity  and  my 
own  conscience,)  had  retired  to  the  back-country,  and 
lived  in  a  wigwam." 

In  this  mood,  and  in  such  straits,  he  was  tasting  the 
full  bitterness  of  the  treatment  which  every  great  com- 
mander, other  than  an  absolute  sovereign,  is  in  his  first 
campaign  called  upon  to  endure.  Patriots,  all  the  con- 
tinent over,  were  wondering  and  questioning  why  Boston 
had  not  long  ago  been  stormed  ;  and  the  mouth  of  the 
one  man  who  could  tell  them  the  reason  was  closed  in 
public  by  considerations  of  which,  in  his  familiar  corre- 
spondence, he  made  no  secret.  "  I  cannot  stand  justified 
to  the  world,"  so  Washington  wrote,  "  without  exposing 
my  own  weakness,  and  injuring  the  cause  by  declaring 
my  wants,  which  I  am  determined  not  to  do,  farther 
than  unavoidable  necessity  brings  every  man  acquainted 
with  them.  If  I  did  not  consult  the  public  good  more 
than  my  own  tranquillity,  I  should  long  ere  this  have  put 
everything  on  the  cast  of  a  die."  The  chimney-corner 
heroes,  as  he  styled  them,  urged  him  to  begin  by  recapt- 
uring Charlestown.  But  long  before  Christmas  Bunker's 
Hill  was  an  Ehrenbreitstein,  or  a  Gibraltar,  by  compari- 
son with  what  it  had  been  in  the  month  of  June.  Ac- 
cording to  Washington's  own  description  it  was,  both  in 
rear  and  in  front,  "  by  odds  the  strongest  fortress  "  of 
the  British ;  which  one  thousand  men,  made  of  the  stuff 

substantial  than  those  already  made.  Those  in  the  New  Hampshire  lines 
are  ridiculously  short  and  light." — American  Archives,  July  23,  1775. 
In  an  early  General  Order  Washington  desired  that  pikes  should  be  kept 
clean  and  greased. 

Major-General  Lloyd  served  several  campaigns  against  Frederic  the 
Great,  and,  (a  matter  more  arduous  still,)  succeeded  in  pleasing  Mr.  Car- 
lyle,  who  pronounced  him  a  writer  of  great  natural  sagacity.  Lloyd,  in 
that  section  of  his  History  of  the  Seven  Years'  War  which  treats  of  the 
Ordering  of  a  Modern  Army,  recommended  that  one  infantry  soldier,  out 
of  every  four,  should  have  a  pike  in  place  of  a  musket. 


WASHING  TON  355 

that  was  behind  those  ramparts,  could  keep  against  any 
twenty  thousand.  And  in  the  American  camp  there 
were  not  half  that  number,  all  told,  under  arms;  —  if 
such  an  expression  could  be  fairly  applied  to  troops  who 
had  nothing  with  which  to  load  their  cannon,  and  whom 
the  first  half-hour's  fight  would  leave  without  a  cartridge 
for  their  muskets. 

Criticism  was  severe  upon  Washington  in  Congress, 
in  the  newspapers,  and  above  all  in  the  taverns  ;  but  he 
already  had  secured  the  confidence  and  the  loyalty  of 
those  who  immediately  surrounded  his  person.  On  the 
eighteenth  of  October  he  summoned  his  major-generals 
and  brigadiers  to  a  conference.  The  delegates  from 
Philadelphia,  who  answered  pretty  closely  to  the  cele- 
brated Representatives  on  Mission  to  the  Armies  during 
the  early  wars  of  the  French  Revolution,  had  invited 
Washington  to  say  why  an  assault  should  not  forthwith 
be  ordered.  His  own  decision  had  been  made;  and  he 
was  well  able  to  express  it,  and  to  stand  by  it.  And  yet, 
for  the  satisfaction  of  his  employers,  he  was  not  sorry 
to  fortify  that  decision  by  the  concurrence,  (if  such  could 
be  obtained,)  of  his  ardent  and,  in  some  cases,  very  capa- 
ble subordinates.  Charles  Lee  would  not  commit  him- 
self to  the  support  of  one  whom  he  had  the  presumption 
to  regard  as  an  overrated  rival,  and  spoke  in  guarded 
phrases,  like  a  man  not  sufficiently  behind  the  scenes  to 
judge.  But  Ward,  Greene,  and  Putnam,  and  their  other 
colleagues,  one  and  all,  roundly  declared  that  an  attack 
on  Boston  by  open  force,  until  things  changed  greatly 
for  the  better,  could  not  even  be  contemplated  as  a  prac- 
ticable operation.  Washington,  in  addition  to  every- 
thing else,  had  his  special  troubles  with  the  provincial 
assemblies ;  whose  good-will,  in  an  army  composed  like 
his,  imported  at  least  as  much  to  him  as  that  of  the  cen- 
tral government.  Massachusetts  and  Connecticut  had 
desired  him  to  send  them  back  strong  detachments  from 
their  own  militia  regiments  in  order  to  protect  the  towns 
on  their  coasts  from  the  armed  vessels  of  the  enemy. 
To  this  requisition  the  Commander-in-Chief  replied  that 


356  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

the  threatened  districts  would  have  to  take  measures  for 
defending  themselves ;  and  that,  if  it  came  to  the  worst, 
they  must  patiently  endure  calamities  against  which  he 
could  not  effectually  guard  them  without  sacrificing  the 
general  interests  of  the  cause.1  He  quietly  but  explicitly 
gave  it  to  be  understood  that  not  a  man  could  be  spared 
from  that  neighbourhood  where  the  great  game  was 
being  played  out  which  would  fix  the  fate,  not  of  Boston 
only,  but  of  every  fishing  hamlet  along  the  seaboard  of 
all  the  colonies. 

His  constancy  was  rewarded.  At  last  he  began  to 
reap  the  advantage  which  accrues  to  a  strategist  who, 
amidst  perils  and  anxieties  the  full  extent  of  which  is 
known  only  to  himself,  steadfastly  maintains  at  least 
the  appearance  of  an  aggressive  attitude.  New  England 
felt  proud  of  having  an  army  which  could  keep  the  field. 
The  spirit  of  her  people  was  high  and  buoyant,  and  they 
were  ready  to  perform  their  duty,  when  that  duty  was 
told  them  by  a  man  whom  they  believed.  To  fill  the 
gaps  in  his  line,  while  recruitment  for  the  Continental 
army  was  in  progress,  Washington  invited  Massachu- 
setts and  New  Hampshire  to  call  out  five  thousand  min- 
ute-men on  temporary  service.  They  came  in  great 
numbers,  and  their  behaviour  in  camp  left  nothing  to 
be  desired.  It  soon  was  evident  that  the  action  of  the 
Connecticut  militia  was  not  to  the  taste  of  their  fellow- 
citizens.  The  men,  as  they  straggled  home  in  twos  and 
threes,  met  with  a  reception  which  convinced  them  that, 
unless  they  returned  straight  away  to  their  regiment 
before  the  public  opinion  of  their  village  took  shape  in 
action,  they  would  have  to  travel  at  least  the  first  stage 
of  their  journey  to  Cambridge  by  a  mode  of  conveyance 
neither  easy  nor  dignified,  and  in  a  costume  not  unsuited 
to  people  who  had  chosen  to  display  the  white  feather. 
The  next  time  that  the  battalion  was  paraded,  and  the 
roll  called,  only  eighty  of  the  delinquents  were  missing. 

1  Washington  to  the  Speaker  of  the  General  Assembly  of  Massachusetts 
Bay;  31  July,  1775. 


DORCHESTER  HEIGHTS  357 

But  the  gallant  colony,  after  having  played  so  vigorous 
a  part  in  the  scenes  of  political  disturbance  which  ush- 
ered in  the  war,  was  not  now  contented  with  seeing  that 
a  parcel  of  unwilling  soldiers  were  sent  back  to  their 
quarters.  A  touch  of  shame  and  compunction,  at  the 
thought  of  the  vexation  inflicted  by  her  unworthy  sons 
on  their  uncomplaining  General,  gave  such  an  impulse 
to  the  patriotism  of  Connecticut  that  the  force  which 
she  contributed  to  Washington's  army,  from  that  moment 
onwards,  and  throughout  the  whole  course  of  the  strug- 
gle, exceeded  the  contingent  furnished  by  any  province, 
except  Massachusetts  only.1  The  alacrity  of  the  New 
Hampshire  minute-men,  and  the  splendid  repentance  of 
Connecticut,  afforded  examples  which  were  not  wasted. 
The  tide  had  turned,  and  ran  in  fast.  Companies  filled 
up  with  recruits.  Older  soldiers  came  promptly  from 
furlough.  By  the  middle  of  February,  1776,  Washington 
reckoned  his  strength  at  the  full  number  of  seventeen 
thousand  fighting  men ;  and  the  best  intelligence  which 
he  could  obtain  from  inside  Boston  led  him  to  conjecture 
that  the  losses  and  privations  of  the  siege  had  reduced 
the  British  to  a  little  over  five  thousand  effective  infantry. 
The  informants  on  whom  the  General  relied  had  put 
the  hostile  force  at  too  low  a  figure ;  but  for  them,  and 
for  him  as  well,  it  was  the  hour  of  hope.  He  had  worked 
and  waited  long  with  less  than  no  encouragement ;  and 
now  everything  seemed  to  be  on  the  mend  at  once. 
The  first  gleam  of  success  had  been  the  capture  of  the 
Nancy,  a  royal  ordnance  brig  which  Captain  Manly 
brought  into  shore  at  Cape  Ann,  the  northern  point  of 
Massachusetts  Bay.  Washington,  who  knew  the  value 
of  the  prize  better  than  did  the  British  admiral,  hurried 
off  a  strong  party  of  minute-men  to  protect  the  unlading 
of  her  cargo.  It  was  well  worth  the  trouble  ;  for  among 
the  items  were  two  thousand  muskets,  a  hundred  thou- 

1  In  1776  Massachusetts  sent  13,372  men  to  the  army,  Connecticut 
6,390,  Virginia  6, 1 8 1 ,  and  Pennsylvania  5,519-  During  the  remaining  years 
of  the  war  Massachusetts  sent  38,091,  Connecticut  21,142,  Virginia  20,491, 
and  Pennsylvania  19,689. 


358  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

sand  flints,  thirty  thousand  round-shot,  and  thirty  tons 
of  bullets.  When  the  trophies  arrived  in  camp  the  most 
popular,  if  not  the  most  useful,  was  a  monster  mortar, 
which  Putnam,  amidst  universal  hilarity,  baptized  with 
a  bottle  of  rum ;  but  which  enjoyed  a  very  short  life 
under  its  new  name  of  the  "  Congress."  1  There  was 
no  fear  that  the  old  General  would  be  accused  of  wast- 
ing good  liquor,  for  immense  and  increasing  abundance 
reigned  throughout  the  cantonments.  The  only  differ- 
ence in  the  ration,  as  months  went  on,  was  that  the 
men  got  another  half-pound  of  meat  daily,  and  that 
their  allowance  of  vegetables  was  doubled.  Means  had 
been  discovered  to  remedy  the  scarcity  of  fuel ;  and  the 
soldiers  secured  enough  of  the  illimitable  forests  that 
clothed  the  land  to  cook  their  generous  meals,  and  to  keep 
them  warm  in  weather  which,  even  under  less  comforta- 
ble circumstances,  would  have  had  no  great  terrors  for 
a  New  Englander.  For  the  winter,  which  had  promised 
badly,  became  first  endurable,  and  then  unusually  mild. 
"  The  Bay  is  open,"  a  colonial  officer  wrote  in  January. 
"  Everything  thaws  here,  except  old  Put.  He  is  still  as 
hard  as  ever,  crying  out  for  powder,  powder,  ye  Gods  give 
us  powder  !  "  And  at  last  the  powder  came.  Washing- 
ton, who  would  stoop  and  traffic  for  nothing  else,  had 
begged,  bought,  or  borrowed  a  modest  but  well-hus- 
banded stock  of  that  precious  commodity ;  and,  in  the 
very  same  letter  which  recommended  the  use  of  bows 
and  arrows,  Franklin  reported  the  welcome  intelligence 
that  the  Secret  Committee  of  Congress,  appointed  to 
provide  the  material  of  war,  —  a  Committee  of  which  he 
himself  was  the  life  and  soul,  —  had  contrived  to  lay  its 
hands  on  a  hundred  and  fifty  tons  of  saltpetre. 

Whether  the  supply  of  powder  in  the  Cambridge 
magazine  was  small  or  large,  the  news  from  England 
was  of  a  nature  to  make  it  go  off  of  itself.  On  the  first 
of  January,  1776,  a  flag  of  thirteen  stripes,  one  for  each 
colony,  was  hoisted  for  the  first  time  over  the  American 

1  "  Our  people  splet  the  Congress  the  third  time  that  they  fired  it." 
How's  Diary ;  March  4,  1776. 


DORCHESTER  HEIGHTS  359 

headquarters  ;  and  on  the  same  day  copies  of  the  speech 
made  by  the  King  at  the  opening  of  Parliament  were 
distributed  broadcast  among  the  besiegers  by  the  ex- 
ertions of  the  Boston  Tories.  Those  gentlemen  antici- 
pated that  the  august  document  would  strike  panic, 
and  implant  penitence,  in  the  hardiest  breast ;  but  the 
blockade  had  already  endured  long  enough  for  them  to 
have  lost  touch  with  the  mass  of  their  countrymen. 
They  were  woefully  out  in  their  calculations.  "  We 
are  favoured,"  wrote  Washington,  "  with  a  sight  of  his 
Majesty's  most  gracious  speech,  breathing  sentiments  of 
tenderness  and  compassion  for  his  deluded  American 
subjects.  We  now  know  the  ultimatum  of  British 
justice."  The  tone  of  the  royal  manifesto  was  haughty 
and  confident ;  the  threats  were  formidable ;  and  the 
Ministry  was  labouring  with  zeal,  and  spending  with 
prodigality,  in  order  to  make  those  menaces  good. 

Ordinary  men,  whether  in  their  own  corner  of  a 
battle,  or  from  their  particular  post  in  the  wider  opera- 
tions of  a  war,  discern  that  which  is  immediately  to  the 
front  of  them,  and  do  not  trouble  themselves  about  what 
is  in  the  distance  or  the  future.  The  Americans  who, 
from  Prospect  Hill  and  Roxbury  Fort,  saw  Howe  and 
his  regiments  cooped  up  within  an  acreage  which  would 
not  support  the  dignity  of  a  small  British  squire,  laughed 
at  King  George's  assurances  that  a  speedy  retribution 
was  to  fall  "  on  the  author  and  promoters  of  a  desperate 
conspiracy."  Horace  Walpole  descanted  to  his  friend 
Mason  on  the  absurdity  of  the  idea  that  the  Congress 
at  Philadelphia  would  be  so  frightened  at  the  British 
army  being  besieged  in  Boston  that  it  would  sue  for 
peace.  The  thought  which  struck  a  man  of  letters, 
writing  in  his  study  at  Twickenham,  was  still  more 
forcibly  brought  home  to  a  Continental  soldier,  already 
something  of  a  veteran,  as  he  stood  behind  the  parapet 
of  an  impregnable  redoubt,  and  fingered  the  lock  of  a 
new  Tower  musket  which  was  his  share  in  the  spoils  of 
the  store-ship  Nancy.  The  conclusion  at  which  Walpole 
arrived  by  intuition,  Franklin  reached  by  a  process  of 


360  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

reckoning.  "  Britain,"  he  said,  "  at  the  expense  of  three 
millions  has  killed  one  hundred  and  fifty  Yankees  this 
campaign,  which  is  twenty  thousand  pounds  a  head ; 
and  at  Bunker's  Hill  she  gained  a  mile  of  ground,  half 
of  which  she  lost  again  by  our  taking  post  on  Ploughed 
Hill.  During  the  same  time  sixty  thousand  children 
have  been  born  in  America."  From  these  data,  (the 
Doctor  argued,)  a  mathematical  head  might  easily  com- 
pute the  time  and  expense  necessary  to  kill  all  American 
rebels,  and  to  conquer  their  whole  territory. 

Congress  had  already  voted  a  Resolution  which  reads 
like  a  decree  of  the  Roman  Senate  in  the  sternest  days 
of  the  Republic.  It  was  to  the  effect  that,  if  General 
Washington  and  his  council  should  be  of  opinion  that  he 
could  make  a  successful  attack  on  the  troops  in  Boston, 
the  attack  should  be  made,  notwithstanding  that  the 
town,  and  the  property  in  it,  might  thereby  be  destroyed. 
The  President  of  the  assembly,  who  had  large  posses- 
sions in  the  devoted  city,  communicated  the  Resolution 
to  the  General,  and  added  on  his  own  part  a  prayer  that 
God  would  crown  the  undertaking  with  victory.  Half 
way  through  February,  when  a  spell  of  hard  weather 
came,  and  the  channels  between  the  town  and  the  main- 
land were  choked  with  ice,  Washington  was  ready,  and 
even  persuaded  himself  that  he  was  eager,  to  assault  the 
British  lines.  But  his  military  advisers  were  almost 
unanimous  in  the  opposite  sense.  They  warned  the 
Commander-in-Chief  that  he  greatly  underestimated 
the  strength  of  the  garrison ;  and  a  very  recent  event 
had  indicated  what  would  be  the  chances  of  an  advance 
in  broad  daylight,  across  an  ice-field  swept  by  grape, 
against  works  held  by  British  infantry,  and  plenty  of 
it.  The  patriots  had  already  made  an  attempt  upon 
Canada.  An  American  storming  party  had  assaulted 
Quebec  in  the  darkest  hour  of  the  last  night  of  the  old 
year,  1775.  The  enterprise  was  a  complete  and  costly 
failure,  though  it  had  been  heroically  led  by  Richard 
Montgomery,  who  was  killed,  and  by  Benedict  Arnold, 
who  was  badly  wounded,  but,  for  his  misfortune,  was 


DORCHESTER  HEIGHTS  361 

borne  away  alive.  The  slaughter  and  discomfiture  which 
marked  the  operation  against  Quebec  would  in  all  human 
probability  be  repeated  at  Boston  on  a  far  larger  scale, 
and  with  most  damaging  consequences  to  the  cause  of 
the  Revolution.  Congress  might  be  willing  to  sacrifice 
Boston ;  but  the  generals  of  the  only  army  which  Con- 
gress had  would  not  expend  their  people  without  reason- 
able hope  of  an  adequate  return.  As  men  of  tried  and 
admitted  courage,  they  had  no  qualms  about  speaking 
out  on  the  side  of  caution  ;  and  their  sturdy  frankness 
did  Washington  a  service  which  he  himself  before  long 
came  very  near  to  acknowledging.  When  he  had  slept 
twice  on  their  counsel,  with  such  sleep  as  during  that 
winter  visited  his  pillow,  he  allowed  that  the  intolerable 
irksomeness  of  his  personal  situation  might  possibly 
have  inclined  him  to  put  more  to  the  hazard  than  pru- 
dence would  have  sanctioned.1 

He  had  refused  to  move  forward  at  the  dictation  of 
public  clamour;  and  he  had  been  restrained  by  those 
around  him  from  obeying  the  momentary  promptings 
of  his  own  impatience.  At  length  he  took  action,  at 
the  due  time,  and  in  the  right  way.  General  Howe  had 
arrived  at  the  conclusion  that  Boston  was  useless  as  a 
base  of  operations  against  the  continent  of  America, 
and  most  assuredly  could  not  be  regarded  in  the  light 
of  desirable  quarters  for  the  ensuing  summer.  Fully 
intending  sooner  or  later  to  evacuate  the  city,  he  had 
preferred  to  wait  for  additional  transports,  a  fresh  sup- 
ply of  provisions,  and  a  season  more  suited  to  a  voyage 
which  at  the  best  would  be  uncomfortable  and  distress- 
ing, and  fearfully  dangerous  in  a  gale.  It  was  no  light 
matter  to  conduct  along  four  hundred  miles  of  hostile 
coast,  in  the  northern  seas,  a  fleet  into  which  would  be 
crowded  a  whole  army,  the  staff  of  a  civil  government, 
and  all  the  Loyalists  of  a  great  province,  together  with 
their  families  and  furniture.  Some  Whigs  inside  Boston, 
always  quick  to  detect  any  symptoms  favourable  to  their 
cause,  apprised  the  American  commander  that  the  Brit- 
*  Washington  to  the  President  of  Congress;  18  Feb.,  1776. 


362  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

ish  garrison  would  not  be  long  with  them  ;  and  his 
telescope  confirmed  the  story.  Heavy  cannon  were 
seen  to  be  withdrawn  from  the  fortifications,  and  carried 
on  board  the  ships.  The  square-rigged  vessels  in  the 
harbour  had  been  taken  into  the  royal  service ;  their 
sails  were  bent,  and  their  water-casks  sent  ashore  to  be 
filled.  All  this  show,  Washington  opined,  might  only  be 
a  feint ; l  and  he  resolved  to  make  sure  that  it  should 
become  a  reality.  He  devised  a  scheme  which  would 
oblige  the  British  either  to  surrender  the  capital  of  Mas- 
sachusetts, or  come  forth  and  attack  him  on  his  own 
ground  with  no  probability  of  success,  and  all  but  the 
certainty  of  a  frightful  disaster.  But  at  one  end  of  the 
city  or  the  other,  in  fair  weather  or  in  foul,  with  or 
without  bloodshed,  from  Boston  he  was  determined  that 
they  should  go. 

Howe  reposed  in  the  belief  that  he  might  choose  his 
own  moment  for  the  step  which  he  had  in  contempla- 
tion. An  attempt  from  the  rebels,  (he  informed  Lord 
Dartmouth,)  whether  by  surprise  or  otherwise,  was  not 
in  the  least  to  be  apprehended.  Nothing,  he  said,  was 
so  much  to  be  wished  as  that  they  would  have  the  rash- 
ness to  quit  those  strong  intrenchments  to  which  alone 
they  owed  their  safety.  Howe  was  so  far  in  the  right 
that  for  either  Washington,  or  himself,  to  assault  was  to 
court  defeat ;  inasmuch  as  the  English  and  the  Ameri- 
can positions  were  equally  strong,  and  manned  by  troops 
who,  when  fighting  under  cover,  were  equally  good. 
But,  where  two  armies  are  so  situated  that  the  defence  is 
more  formidable  than  the  attack,  special  attention  must 
be  paid  to  any  commanding  post  which  one  or  another 
of  the  parties  can  seize  and  fortify  without  a  contest. 
Just  such  a  post  was  the  promontory  of  Dorchester, 
which  covered  and  dominated  Boston  on  the  South. 
Two  miles  long,  and  two-thirds  of  a  mile  broad,  it  was 
dotted  with  heights  of  sufficient  elevation  for  military 
purposes,  planted  exactly  where  they  were  most  useful 
to  the  besiegers.  A  battery  placed  on  the  Eastern 

1  Washington  to  Major-General  Lee;    Cambridge,  26  Feb.,  1776. 


DORCHESTER  HEIGHTS  363 

extremity  would  carry  its  shot  across  the  deep-water 
approach  to  the  harbour ;  and  a  battery  on  the  Western 
horn  could  annihilate  the  town. 

Howe  had  neglected  to  secure  the  peninsula ;  and  he 
was  not  without  his  excuse.  The  ground,  open  on  the 
quarter  towards  the  enemy,  required  a  larger  force  to 
hold  it  than  he  could  spare  from  his  widely  extended 
and  ever-threatened  lines.  He  had  no  hope  of  being 
reinforced  from  across  the  ocean.  Lord  Barrington,  in 
January  1776,  laid  a  paper  before  the  King  stating  that 
the  strength  of  the  army  at  home  fell  short  of  fourteen 
thousand,  counting  in  the  officers,  who  in  the  higher 
grades  were  in  prodigious  excess  with  reference  to  the 
men.  "  North  Britain,"  he  wrote,  "  never  was  so  bare, 
having  only  one  battalion  of  foot,  and  one  regiment  of 
dragoons,  besides  invalids."  Such  scanty  detachments 
as  were  sent  sailed  months  behind  time,  in  bad  ships,  for 
the  worst  of  reasons.  Frederic  the  Great  did  not  pro- 
fess an  intimate  acquaintance  with  naval  matters ;  and 
indeed  his  solitary  experience  of  navigation  had  been  an 
inland  voyage  in  a  Dutch  canal-boat ;  but  he  understood 
as  thoroughly  as  any  man  in  Christendom  that  reinforce- 
ments should  be  brought  on  to  the  field  before  the 
event,  instead  of  after  it.  He  learned  with  astonish- 
ment from  his  envoy  in  London  that,  at  a  crisis  when 
every  day  was  of  consequence,  men  of  war  were  not  em- 
ployed for  the  conveyance  of  troops  because  people 
high  in  place  would  not  surrender  their  commission  of 
three  per  cent,  on  the  hire  of  trading  vessels.1 

Bad  as  it  was,  that  was  not  the  worst  of  the  story.  In 
the  course  of  January,  General  Clinton,  under  express 
orders  from  home,  started  for  the  Carolinas  with  a  detach- 
ment which  was  withdrawn  from  the  already  inadequate 
garrison  of  Boston.  Lord  Barrington  was  opposed  to 
the  expedition ;  but  his  dislike  of  the  project  had  been 
overborne  by  other  Ministers  who,  because  inside  the 
Cabinet  they  were  ruder  fighters  than  the  Secretary  at 

*Le  Roi  Frederic  au  Comte  de  Maltzan;  Potsdam,  8  Avril,  1776.  Lc 
Comte  de  Maltzan  au  Roi  Frederic;  Londres,  23  Avril,  1776. 


364  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

War,  thought  themselves  sounder  judges  of  a  military 
operation.  The  unhappy  nobleman,  who  was  supposed 
to  wield  the  sword  of  England,  surrendered  his  view  the 
more  easily  because  the  raid  on  the  Southern  colonies  of 
America  soon  became  a  pet  scheme  of  his  royal  master. 
The  King  himself,  with  his  customary  minuteness  and 
precision,  named  the  regiments  which  were  to  sail  from 
the  Home  ports;  and  his  zeal  was  so  great  that,  while 
the  army  in  Ireland  had  been  reduced  too  low  for  safety, 
and  Scotland  had  been  stripped  almost  bare,  only  three 
battalions  of  regular  infantry  remained  available  for  the 
protection  of  the  whole  of  England.  Clinton  was  joined 
off  Charleston  by  Lord  Cornwallis,  who  brought  at  least 
two  thousand  more  soldiers,  and  by  Sir  Peter  Parker 
with  some  fifty-gun-ships  and  frigates.  But  the  force 
which,  if  it  had  been  left  with  Howe,  might  have  en- 
abled him  to  hold  his  own  in  New  England,  was  all  too 
weak  for  independent  action.  The  outworks  protecting 
the  approach  to  Charleston  were  feebly  attacked,  and 
stoutly  defended ;  and  the  affair  resulted  in  a  failure 
for  Clinton,  and  in  nothing  short  of  a  calamity  for 
Parker  and  his  squadron. 

Washington,  on  the  other  hand,  had  men  enough  not 
only  for  the  indispensable  requirements,  but  also  for  the 
profitable  risks,  of  war.  There  had  been  a  deficiency 
of  heavy  guns  ;  but  at  last  that  want  was  supplied.  Imme- 
diately after  Lexington  a  handful  of  American  volunteers, 
—  with  Benedict  Arnold,  and  better  men  than  he,  among 
them,  though  braver  there  could  not  be,  —  captured 
Ticonderoga  by  a  stroke  of  well-timed  and  audacious 
inspiration.  Ethan  Allen,  who  led  the  band,  in  default 
of  a  more  regular  commission  under  which  to  act,  took 
possession  of  the  place  in  the  name  of  the  great  Jehovah 
and  the  Continental  Congress.  The  fortress  contained 
a  great  store  of  cannon,  which  had  formerly  been  trans- 
ported into  those  distant  wilds  by  Anglo-Saxon  energy. 
The  stock  of  that  latter  article  had  not  run  out.  Colonel 
Knox,  a  deft  and  enterprising  officer  high  in  Washington's 
confidence,  built  sledges,  and  in  the  dead  of  winter  hauled 


DORCHESTER  HEIGHTS  365 

the  priceless  freight  Southward  along  frozen  lakes,  and 
over  forest  roads  which  had  been  barely  passable  during 
the  droughts  of  summer.  When  the  first  and  worst 
stage  of  the  journey  had  been  overcome,  and  nothing 
more  serious  than  fifty  leagues  of  snowdrift  and  mire  lay 
between  himself  and  the.  goal  towards  which  he  was 
travelling,  the  Colonel  gaily  wrote  that  he  hoped  to  pre- 
sent his  Excellency  with  a  whole  train  of  artillery.  Before 
March  he  handed  over  to  his  chief  forty  large  guns,  and 
half  as  many  mortars  ;  and  Washington  in  the  meanwhile, 
by  his  own  exertions,  had  scraped  together  the  where- 
withal at  least  to  open  fire.  He  had  ammunition  enough 
to  go  once  round  the  army ;  but,  when  the  cartridge  boxes 
of  the  infantry  were  replenished,  and  the  magazines  in 
the  batteries  had  been  filled  up,  only  a  hundred  barrels 
of  powder  remained  in  reserve.  Other  military  stores  had 
been  provided  in  plenty ;  rude  of  design,  although  suited 
for  rough  and  temporary  work  in  the  hands  of  dexterous 
and  hardy  men.  As  material  for  breastworks  there  were 
vast  piles  of  faggots,  and  of  grass  ropes  such  as  a  pair 
of  New  England  haymakers  could  twist  at  the  rate  of 
a  fathom  a  minute.  There  were  empty  casks,  to  hold 
the  earth  from  the  ditches  ;  stacks  of  shovels  and  pick- 
axes ;  and  two  thousand  bandages  for  broken  limbs, 
which  by  the  grace  of  Heaven,  or  the  good  sense  of 
man,  never  came  to  be  needed.  Out  of  sight  from  the 
British  lines,  if  not  from  the  British  spies,  there  lay  in 
Charles  River  two  floating  batteries,  and  barges  with 
room  to  carry  ten  battalions  across  a  stretch  of  smooth 
water.  They  had  been  constructed  hastily  and  slightly, 
but  by  people  the  occupation  of  whose  lives  had  taught 
them  to  know  whether  or  not  a  boat  would  swim.  And, 
at  the  last  moment,  the  militia  of  all  the  neighbouring 
townships  repaired  to  camp,  with  a  pledge  from  Wash- 
ington that  he  would  not  keep  them  long,  and  a  belief 
on  their  part  that  this  time  the  General  purposed  to  see 
the  business  through. 

They  were  correct  in  their  anticipations.     On  those 
rare   occasions  when   Washington   had   the   means   to 


366  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

assume  the  offensive,  his  action  was  as  swift,  as  direct, 
as  continuous,  and,  (for  its  special  characteristic,)  as  un- 
expected as  that  of  any  captain  in  history.  He  had  not 
fought  Red  Indians  in  his  youth  for  nothing.  But,  secret 
and  silent  as  he  was  in  regard  to  the  direction  and  the 
details  of  his  future  movements,  Washington  was  too 
much  of  a  citizen  not  to  place  himself  in  close  mental 
relation  with  his  soldiers  before  he  called  upon  them  for 
unusual  efforts  and  sacrifices.  On  the  eve  of  the  final 
struggle  he  issued  an  appeal  to  the  army.  Except  in 
its  perfect  suitability  to  the  tastes  and  aspirations  of 
those  whom  he  addressed,  it  was  a  composition  very 
unlike  those  bulletins  by  which  under  the  Directory, 
and  the  First  Empire,  the  French  were  incited  to  the 
conquest  and  plunder  of  Europe.  His  General  Order 
of  February  the  twenty-sixth  began  by  forbidding  offi- 
cers, non-commissioned  officers,  or  privates  to  play  at 
cards  or  other  games  of  chance ;  inasmuch  as,  at  a  time 
of  distress,  men  might  find  enough  to  do  in  the  service 
of  God  and  their  country  without  abandoning  themselves 
to  vice  and  immorality.  As  the  season  was  now  fast  ap- 
proaching, (so  the  proclamation  went  on,)  when  every 
man  might  expect  to  be  drawn  into  the  field  of  action,  it 
was  highly  important  that  he  should  prepare  his  mind 
for  what  lay  before  him.  They  were  engaged  in  a 
noble  cause.  Freedom  or  slavery  would  be  the  result  of 
their  conduct.  Every  temporal  advantage,  to  them  and 
their  posterity,  would  depend  upon  the  vigour  of  their 
exertions. 

These  words  were  still  being  quoted  and  commented 
on  throughout  the  camp  when  they  were  drowned  by 
the  roar  of  cannon,  but  not  forgotten.  On  the  second 
of  March,  and  again  on  the  fourth,  the  American  bat- 
teries commenced  to  play.  The  noise  was  tremendous, 
but  the  slaughter  small.  A  distant  bombardment,  with 
the  ordnance  of  the  eighteenth  century,  produced  few 
of  the  horrors  of  war  except  only  to  the  taxpayer.  Up 
to  Christmas,  17/5,  the  British  garrison  had  discharged 
two  thousand  rounds,  and  had  killed  less  than  twenty 


DORCHESTER  HEIGHTS  367 

of  the  enemy  ;  and  the  moral  effect,  as  it  is  called,  had 
been  so  much  the  reverse  of  what  was  intended  that  the 
commanding  officer  of  artillery  advised  General  Howe 
to  discontinue  the  cannonade,  as  the  only  perceptible 
result  was  to  inure  the  colonists  to  danger.  In  March, 
however,  when  Washington's  cannon  began  to  speak, 
the  British  gunners  could  not  refuse  the  challenge. 
They  replied  lustily  ;  but  they  shot  next  to  no  one,  and 
dismounted  nothing,  although  {he  besiegers  contrived  to 
burst  five  of  their  own  mortars.1 

The  Americans  hit  a  regimental  guard-house,  which 
they  could  not  very  well  miss,  and  not  many  human 
beings.  Nevertheless,  on  their  side,  it  was  no  waste  of 
powder.  On  Monday  the  fourth  of  March  the  besiegers 
maintained  a  heavy  fire  far  into  the  night.  The  soldiers 
in  Boston  were  kept  busy  extinguishing  flames,  and  re- 
moving goods,  from  beneath  falling  roofs  ;  and  they  had 
neither  eyes  nor  ears  for  what  was  passing  to  the  South- 
ward of  them.  Soon  after  dark  General  Thomas  led  a 
strong  brigade  over  Dorchester  Neck,  followed  by  three 
hundred  carts  laden  with  fascines  and  coils  of  twisted 
hay.  With  these  materials  a  parapet  was  rapidly  built 
along  the  causeway,  under  cover  of  which  fresh  loads  of 
stuff  travelled  to  and  fro  throughout  the  night.  Mean- 
while on  each  of  the  twin  heights  in  the  centre  of  the 
peninsula,  which  were  the  keys  of  the  position,  the 
colonial  soldiers  were  digging,  and  ramming,  and  plas- 
tering the  earth,  like  so  many  peasants  of  Holland 
strengthening  an  embankment  to  save  their  village  from 

1  General  Heath  relates  in  his  Diary  how,  on  December  1 8,  1775,  the 
Americans  broke  grounds  on  Lechmere  Point,  the  most  exposed  spot  in 
their  lines.  Their  working  party  numbered  three  hundred.  An  expecta- 
tion prevailed  that  it  would  be  "a  bloody  day  ";  and  Washington  person- 
ally superintended  the  conduct  of  the  operation.  The  British  batteries, 
until  the  afternoon,  thundered  away,  both  with  shot  and  shell;  and  the 
American  surgeon,  who  was  at  hand  throughout,  never  once  drew  his  in- 
struments from  their  case,  or  a  roll  of  lint  from  his  dressing-box.  A  plain 
man,  who  has  fired  a  charge  of  slugs  at  an  object  in  the  water  a  hundred 
yards  off,  may  estimate  the  value  of  a  remote  cannonade  from  old-fashioned 
twenty-four  pounders,  even  if  he  has  never  looked  into  a  treatise  on  the  law 
of  projectiles. 


368  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

an  inundation.  At  dawn  of  day  two  forts  were  already  in 
existence,  and  in  a  condition  to  protect  their  inmates 
from  grape-shot  and  musket-balls.  A  British  officer  of 
a  sentimental  turn  compared  the  result  of  the  night's 
labour  with  the  wonders  wrought  by  the  lamp  of  Alad- 
din. In  less  flowery,  but  fatally  unpractical,  words  Gen- 
eral Howe  told  Lord  Dartmouth  that  at  least  twelve 
thousand  men  must  have  been  employed  on  the  fortifi- 
cation. The  rebels,  he  remarked,  had  done  more  be- 
tween evening  and  morning  than  the  whole  of  his  own 
army  would  have  accomplished  in  an  entire  month.  He 
had  made  an  error  of  a  thousand  per  cent. ;  for  the  Ameri- 
can working  party  did  not  exceed  twelve  hundred  pairs 
of  arms.  It  would  have  been  well  for  Howe  if  his  pro- 
fessional education  had  included  a  course  of  land-survey- 
ing in  company  with  Washington,  or  even  of  building 
fences  with  Putnam.  The  royal  forces  were  embarked 
on  a  war  of  such  a  character,  and  in  such  a  country, 
that  the  hatchet  and  the  spade  ranked  high  among  mili- 
tary weapons.  A  general  who  knew  something  about 
homely  industries,  and  their  application  to  strategical 
purposes,  would  have  been  of  great  service  to  an  army 
where  guidance  and  teaching  in  that  department  were 
peculiarly  needed.  The  behaviour  of  the  British  soldier 
in  the  labours  of  the  trench  and  the  field-work  was  his 
weakest  point  then,  and  forty  years  afterwards ;  as  was 
sorrowfully  admitted  by  the  best  judges,  who  in  other 
respects  were  his  warm  admirers.1 

Howe  was  unskilled  in  appraising  the  amount  which 
any  given  number  of  sappers  or  artificers  could  get 
done  in  a  given  number  of  hours ;  but  he  had  seen  too 

1  On  this  subject  Sir  John  Burgoyne,  in  his  account  of  the  Siege  of 
Burgos,  has  made  some  observations  which  are  most  interesting,  but,  (even 
after  this  lapse  of  time,)  not  altogether  agreeable  reading.  "  I  had,"  he 
says  in  the  course  of  his  remarks,  "  an  opportunity  of  pointing  out  to  Lord 
Wellington,  one  day,  a  French  and  an  English  working  party,  each  exca- 
vating a  trench.  While  the  P'rench  shovels  were  going  on  as  merrily  as 
possible,  we  saw  in  an  equal  space,  at  long  intervals,  a  single  English 
shovelful  make  its  appearance."  Life  and  Correspondence  of  Field  Mar- 
shal Sir  John  Burgoyne,  pp.  232  and  233  of  the  edition  of  1873. 


DORCHESTER  HEIGHTS  369 

many  battles  and  sieges  for  him  to  have  any  doubt  as 
to  the  plight  in  which  the  latest  move  of  his  adversaries 
had  landed  him.  He  was  not  the  player  to  accept 
checkmate  when  it  was  first  offered.  Between  two  and 
three  thousand  of  his  infantry  were  at  once  shipped  on 
transports  to  Castle  Island,  with  the  design  that  they 
should  thence  attack  the  promontory  of  Dorchester. 
For  their  commander  Howe  had  only  to  choose  among 
the  men  of  headlong  courage  at  his  disposal ;  and  he 
chose  Lord  Percy,  who  had  no  objection,  on  his  own 
account,  to  face  whatever  might  await  him  across  the 
southern  arm  of  the  harbour.  The  forces  under  Thomas 
had  been  doubled  by  a  reinforcement  of  two  thousand 
men.  The  works,  formidable  at  daybreak,  before  noon 
had  received  a  finishing  touch.  Orchards  had  been  cut 
down  to  form  an  abattis.  Rows  of  barrels  filled  with 
earth  were  placed  along  the  edge  of  the  hill,  which  was 
bare  and  steep,  with  the  design  of  rolling  them  down 
upon  the  ascending  columns.  The  Americans  every- 
where seemed  cheery  and  resolute,  and  those  ensconced 
behind  the  earthworks  on  Dorchester  Heights  were  even 
exhilarated.  They  looked  forward  to  another  battle  of 
Bunker's  Hill  in  a  position  twice  as  strong,  with  a  force 
more  than  twice  as  large,  and  under  the  immediate  eye 
of  the  General-in-Chief ;  for  Washington  was  on  the 
spot  full  of  fight,  and,  for  him,  full  of  talk,  and  as  hope- 
ful of  victory  as  the  youngest  of  his  followers. 

Hopeful,  that  is,  in  the  quarter  where  he  commanded 
in  person ;  for  he  was  far  from  easy  about  the  fate  of 
the  operation  to  which  his  left  wing  stood  committed. 
Putnam  had  four  thousand  selected  troops  on  the 
parade  ground  at  Cambridge,  ready  at  a  signal  from 
Dorchester  Heights  to  enter  the  flotilla  which  lay  in  the 
river,  and  advance  by  water  against  the  western  face 
of  Boston  under  cover  of  the  new  floating  batteries. 
Washington  disapproved  the  project ;  but  his  judgement 
had  been  overridden,  and  it  only  remained  for  him  loy- 
ally to  make  the  best  of  a  plan  the  wisdom  of  which  he 
gravely  and  sadly  doubted.  At  this  .period  of  the  war 


2B 


370  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

the  command  in  chief  of  the  American  army  was  rathei 
a  limited  monarchy  than  the  benevolent  despotism  into 
which  it  was  gradually  converted  by  the  pressure  of  his 
strong  character,  and  the  lustre  of  his  first  great  suc- 
cess. Congress  began  by  being  keenly  inquisitive  into 
the  movements  of  the  army,  and  was  much  too  anxious 
about  the  event  to  refrain  from  advising,  and  even  from 
meddling.  The  delegates  at  Philadelphia  were  suffi- 
ciently afraid  of  Washington  to  abstain  from  giving  him 
a  direct  order.  They  transmitted  their  views  to  the  head- 
quarters at  Cambridge  in  the  shape  of  proposals  which 
they  requested  him  to  have  debated  and  decided  in  a 
council  of  war.  Such  a  council  had  recently  been  con- 
voked, in  which  Washington  was  outvoted ;  and  so  it 
came  about  that  the  Americans  were  to  deliver,  and  to 
sustain,  an  attack  on  one  and  the  same  day.  That  day 
was  the  anniversary  of  what  was  called  the  Boston  Mas- 
sacre, and  this  time  there  would  have  been  a  massacre 
indeed.  It  was  odds,  and  large  odds,  that  neither  of  the 
two  assaults  could  succeed ;  and  the  assailants  in  both 
cases  were  of  such  tough  fibre,  and  their  leaders  so  fiery 
and  determined,  that  failure  would  not  have  taken  place 
until  after  a  prolonged  slaughter.  If  the  fighting  had 
once  begun,  the  history  of  the  Revolutionary  war  would 
have  been  disfigured  by  a  more  deeply  crimsoned  page 
than  any  which  can  now  be  found  in  the  volume. 

But  it  was  not  so  to  be.  The  wind  blew  a  gale. 
Sashes  were  forced  in,  sheds  were  wrecked  and  over- 
thrown, and  vessels  torn  from  their  moorings  and  driven 
against  the  quays.  Percy's  transports  could  not  cross 
the  water  in  such  a  hurricane ;  and,  until  the  British 
took  the  initiative,  Washington  refused  to  give  the  sig- 
nal for  Putnam's  forward  movement.  He  was  blamed 
for  want  of  firmness  ;  but  the  old  officer  whom  he  had 
superseded  in  the  command  of  the  army  generously  and 
indignantly  defended  one  who  never  was  at  the  pains 
to  defend  himself.  The  prudence  of  Washington,  so 
General  Heath  declared,  was  applauded  by  military  men 
of  several  nations  after  they  had  made  an  inspection  of 


DORCHESTER  HEIGHTS  371 

the  land  and  water  which  was  to  have  been  the  scene 
of  action.  And  the  veteran  was  mindful  to  direct  his 
gratitude  higher  still,  and  to  aver  that  Providence,  kind 
not  for  the  first  time,  must  have  interposed  to  save  his 
countrymen  when  they  were  bent  on  self-destruction.1 

The  storm  raged  through  the  afternoon  and  night  of 
the  fifth  of  March ;  and  the  next  day  the  wind  was  still 
boisterous,  and  the  rain  came  down  in  torrents.  Before 
the  weather  grew  calm  and  dry  it  had  been  brought 
home  to  the  British  General  that  the  Americans  could 
not  be  expelled  from  their  redoubts,  and  that,  so  long  as 
they  stayed  in  their  redoubts,  they  were  masters  of  the 
whole  promontory.  Immediately  to  their  front,  and  at 
their  disposal  when  they  thought  fit  to  occupy  it,  was  a 
mound  known  as  Nook's  Hill,  from  which,  at  the  distance 
of  half  a  mile,  they  could  enfilade  the  British  earthworks 
on  Boston  Neck,  and  would  not  be  much  further  from 
Griffin's  Wharf  where  the  immortal  tea  was  spilt 
Admiral  Shuldham,  who  had  succeeded  Graves  in  com- 
mand of  the  fleet,  warned  the  military  authorities  that,  if 
Washington  retained  his  hold  on  the  Dorchester  Heights, 
he  himself  could  not  keep  a  ship  in  the  harbour.  When 
the  prospect  of  a  battle  had  vanished,  the  disappoint- 
ment of  the  British  soon  took  the  form  of  despondency. 
Right  or  wrong,  the  belief  was  general  that,  for  the  space 
of  several  months,  no  despatches  had  been  received  from 
the  Government  in  London.  It  looked,  (such  was  the 
burden  of  the  private  letters  written  by  the  garrison  dur- 
ing that  anxious  fortnight,)  as  if  the  men  in  the  post  of 
danger,  now  that  it  was  fast  becoming  an  abode  of  de- 
spair, had  been  left  to  get  out  of  a  bad  scrape  as  best 
they  could.  "  The  fleet  and  the  army,"  it  was  said,  "  com- 
plain of  each  other,  and  both  of  the  people  at  home." 
With  that  suspicion  in  their  minds  the  superior  officers 
repaired  to  a  council  which  Howe  convened,  and  learned 
from  him,  without  surprise  or  dissatisfaction,  that  he 
was  fully  determined  at  whatever  cost  to  save  the 
army. 

1  HeatWs  Memoirs;  Feb.  1 5th  and  March  5th,  1776. 

2B2 


3/2  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

The  danger  was  pressing.  After  dark  on  the  ninth 
of  March  the  New  Englanders  were  already  busy  on 
Nook's  Hill.  They  laboured  undiscovered  and  unmo- 
lested till  some  stupid  fellows  kindled  a  fire  in  rear  of 
the  knoll,  and  soon  found  the  place  even  warmer  than 
they  wished  or  intended.  Four  of  them  were  killed  by 
one  cannon-ball,  and  the  detachment  was  withdrawn  to 
await  a  more  convenient  opportunity.1  But  the  incident 
gave  Howe  food  for  reflection.  The  Americans,  it  was 
evident,  might  choose  their  own  moment  for  erecting 
batteries  at  a  range  within  which  round-shot  could  be 
aimed  with  effect  at  a  knot  of  men,  and  much  more  against 
ships  and  houses,  the  tilt  of  a  powder  waggon,  or  the 
flank  of  a  line  of  cannon  planted  along  the  curtain  of  a 
fortification.  Next  day  he  began  to  push  forward  his 
arrangements  for  the  evacuation  of  the  town  ;  and,  wher- 
ever Howe  exerted  himself,  he  worked  fast.  But  he 
was  not  quick  enough  to  please  Washington,  who  gave 
him  a  significant  hint  that  the  patience  of  the  besiegers 
was  near  to  exhaustion.  The  colonists  returned  to 
Nook's  Hill,  and  crowned  the  eminence  with  a  redoubt, 
from,  which  this  time  they  refused  to  be  driven.  That 
was  the  notice  to  quit.  It  was  handed  in  on  the  sixteenth 
of  March  ;  and  on  the  seventeenth  General  Howe  em- 
barked his  army,  and  Washington  was  a  figure  in  history. 
It  was  exactly  the  operation  which,  repeated  half  a  gen- 
eration afterwards  in  the  port  of  Toulon,  laid  the  f ounda- 

1  In  1 899,  after  the  first  publication  of  this  volume,  the  author  was  honoured 
by  a  letter  from  the  late  Mr.  E.  J.  Phelps,  who  so  effectively,  and  so  acceptably 
to  Londoners,  discharged  the  office  of  American  Ambassador  at  the 
Court  of  St.  James's.  "  You  mention,"  (wrote  Mr.  Phelps,)  "  that,  while  the 
New  Englanders  were  engaged  in  fortifying  Nook's  Hill,  '  some  stupid 
fellows'  kindled  a  fire,  and  soon  found  the  place  warmer  than  they  intended; 
and  that  four  of  them  were  killed  by  one  British  cannon-ball.  Well ;  my 
maternal  grandfather,  a  soldier  in  the  American  army,  was  one  of  those  to 
whom  you  allude  in  such  complimentary  terms;  and  he  was  sitting  by  the 
fire  when  the  cannon-ball  came  in.  He  was  not  hurt;  but  lived  to  tell  me 
the  story  in  my  boyhood.  To  that  small  extent  I  can  corroborate  by  hear- 
say evidence  the  truth  of  your  account."  It  is  pleasant  to  think  of  the 
old  fellow  relating  his  adventures  at  a  more  secure  fireside  than  that  by 
which  he  sate  on  Nook's  Hill  half  a  century  back. 


THE  REFUGEES  373 

tion  of  a  fame  less  desirable,  and  a  life's  work  far  less 
durable,  than  his.1 

Unfortunately  there  was  more  than  a  tactical  and 
topographical  resemblance  between  the  recapture  of 
Toulon  and  the  capture  of  Boston.  Those  two  great 
events  are  marked  by  the  same  melancholy,  and  even 
tragic,  circumstance.  In  both  cases  the  retirement  of  a 
fleet  and  an  army  was  accompanied  by  a  wholesale  and 
enforced  emigration  of  non-combatants.  The  announce- 
ment that  the  city  was  to  be  surrendered  fell  as  a  thun- 
derbolt on  the  Loyalists  whose  home  it  was,  and  not  less 
on  those  who  had  repaired  thither  as  a  place  of  tempo- 
rary refuge.  The  last  trump,  (so  Washington  wrote,) 
could  not  have  struck  them  with  greater  consternation. 
A  fixed  and  ardent  faith  in  the  overwhelming  and  omni- 
present power  of  Britain  was  the  first  article  in  the  creed 
of  the  American  Tories ;  —  for  that  term  was  universally 
applied  to  them  by  themselves  and  their  fellow-colonists  ; 
although,  among  those  politicians  at  Westminster  whom 
they  had  trusted  and  followed  to  their  ruin,  many  still 
laid  claim  to  the  name  of  Whigs.  When  Howe  departed 
from  Boston  there  were  eleven  hundred  people  who 
dared  not  stay  behind,  or  one  for  every  ten  of  his  soldiers 

1  For  the  two  previous  paragraphs  see  HeatKs  Memoirs  ;  March  9,  1776. 
Washington  to  the  President  of  Congress;  March  7,  9, 13,  and  16.  Froth- 
ingham's  Siege  of  Boston  ;  chapter  xii. 

David  How's  Diary  shows  how  a  great  event  struck  a  humble  contempo- 
rary, who  had  played  a  man's  part  in  helping  to  bring  it  about. 

"  March  3.  Last  night  there  was  Firing  Almost  all  night  on  both  sides. 
Two  of  our  mortars  splet  in  pices  at  Litchmor's  point. 

"  March  4.  Last  night  there  was  A  fiering  all  night  with  cannon  and 
Morters  on  both  sides.  Three  Regments  went  from  Cambridge  to  Rox- 
bury  and  carried  Some  Field  Pieces  with  them.  The  Milisher  from  Several 
towns  are  called  In  to  stay  3  days. 

"  March  5.  Our  people  went  to  Dodgster  hill  Last  Night  and  built  a 
fort  there.  They  have  ben  firing  at  Dogester  amost  All  Day. 

"March  10.  Last  night  our  people  went  to  Dodesther  neck  And  there 
was  a  hot  fire  from  Boston  which  Killed  4  men  with  one  ball.  I  went  to 
meting  all  Day  ;  Mr.  Lennard  preached. 

"  March  12.  Last  night  there  was  brisk  fireing  all  Night  From  boston. 
William  Parker  made  me  a  pair  of  Half  Boots  for  Two  Shilling  and  8d. 


374  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

and  sailors.  They  formed  the  aristocracy  of  the  prov- 
ince by  virtue  of  their  official  rank ;  of  their  dignified 
callings  and  professions  ;  of  their  hereditary  wealth  ;  and 
of  their  culture,  except  so  far  as  it  partook  of  that  self- 
education  which  was  open  to  all. 

Eighteen  were  clergymen,  for  the  most  part  Episco- 
palians, as  true  to  what  they  believed  to  be  their  politi- 
cal obligations  as  any  English  Nonjuror  who  went  out 
from  his  parsonage  or  his  palace  in  the  summer  of  1689. 
Among  the  exiles  many  were  landowners  and  substantial 
men  of  business,  and  a  greater  number  still  were  public 
servants.  Good  places,  whether  lay  or  legal,  were  re- 
served for  people  who  regarded  themselves  as  belonging 
to  good  families.  The  same  names,  and  those  not  many, 
occur  over  and  over  again  as  Judges  of  the  Superior 
Court;  Receivers  General, and  Cashiers,  of  his  Majesty's 
Customs ;  Commissioners,  Inspectors,  Treasurers,  and 
Registrars  and  Clerks  of  Probate.  Hutchinsons  and 
Olivers,  Leonards,  Chandlers,  and  Coffins,  — patronymics 
which  to  a  Bostonian  of  those  days  denoted  the  very 
quintessence  of  exclusiveness, — divided  among  them- 
selves salaries  and  honours,  perquisites  and  privileges. 
They  honestly  believed  that  the  fitness  of  things  required 
the  established  method  of  distribution  to  last  for  ever. 
Their  best  feelings  were  hurt  when  a  new  man,  with 
newfangled  political  opinions,  put  in  his  claim  to  a 
share.  The  inspiring  motive,  according  to  their  story, 
of  every  Revolutionary  leader  was  the  need  and  greed 
for  office ;  and  their  posterity  across  the  Canadian  fron- 
tier continued,  in  filial  good  faith,  to  repeat  the  same  tale 
for  the  benefit  of  our  own  generation. 

In  their  view  Congressmen  and  Committee-men  were 
"  a  set  of  rascals,  who  only  sought  to  feather  their  own 
nests,  and  not  to  serve  their  country."  An  unlucky 
Loyalist  who  happened  to  use  those  expressions  in  ill- 
chosen  company  got  himself  inside  a  jail ;  and  the  words 
have  a  natural,  and  almost  elemental,  ring  about  them 
which  irresistibly  suggests  that  it  was  not  the  first  time, 
by  a  hundred,  that  they  had  been  uttered  with  emphasis 


THE  REFUGEES  375 

in  Tory  circles.  According  to  the  theory  accepted  by 
those  circles,  Otis  started  the  agitation,  which  started 
everything,  because  his  father  had  missed  a  judgeship. 
Joseph  Warren  was  a  broken  man,  and  sought  to  mend 
his  fortunes  by  upsetting  those  of  others.  John  Hancock, 
too  rich  to  want  a  place,  suffered  from  wounded  vanity 
when  walking  behind  his  betters  in  the  order  of  prece- 
dence. Richard  Henry  Lee  had  been  baulked  of  an 
appointment  as  Distributor  of  Stamps  under  the  Act 
which  then,  and  only  then,  he  came  forward  to  denounce. 
John  Adams  turned  rebel  because  he  was  refused  a  Com- 
mission of  the  Peace  ;  and  Washington  himself  never 
forgave  the  British  War  Office  for  having  treated  him 
with  the  neglect  which  was  the  natural  portion  of  Provin- 
cial military  officers.  It  was  an  argument  with  two 
edges ;  and  there  is  now  little  doubt  which  of  the  two 
cut  the  sharpest.  What  claim  to  perpetuity,  (it  has  been 
finely  asked,)  had  those  institutions  under  which  John 
Adams  could  not  be  a  magistrate,  and  any  stripling  who 
had  purchased  a  pair  of  colours  took  rank  of  George 
Washington  ? 1  Disappointed  men  perhaps  they  had 
been  ;  but  their  day  arrived  ;  and,  if  they  could  not  be 
justices  or  majors  in  a  marching  regiment,  they  both 
obtained  a  post  for  which  they  were  not  less  competent, 
and  became  each  in  his  turn  the  chief  governor  of  a 
nation. 

The  Loyalists  were  a  prosperous  and  enjoying  set, 
free  with  their  cash  ;  hearty  with  their  fellows  ;  just,  and 
something  more,  towards  those  who  had  a  claim  on  them  ; 
and  very  indulgent  to  their  negro  slaves.  They  were 
not  ascetics ;  and,  if  they  had  stayed  in  the  country,  it 
is  possible  that  the  march  of  Temperance  legislation 
would  have  been  seriously  delayed  in  some  of  the  New 
England  districts.  The  breaking  of  his  punch-bowl  was 
the  worst  damage  to  his  property  which  Doctor  Peters 
of  Hebron  had  to  deplore,  when  his  angry  parishioners 
came  to  search  his  house  for  arms.  An  epitaph  com- 

i  Sabine's  Historical  Essay  ;  p.  57  in  the  Boston  edition  of  1864. 


3/6  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

posed  for  himself  by  an  Episcopalian  clergyman,  com 
mencing  with  the  lines, 

"  Here  lies  a  priest  of  English  blood 
Who  living  liked  whate'er  was  good," 

would  not  have  been  misplaced  on  the  tombstones  of 
many  among  his  reverend  brethren.  Clerics,  men  of 
business,  and  country  gentlemen,  they  dressed  ceremoni- 
ously and  expensively ;  and  they  had  manners,  and 
those  not  merely  skin-deep,  in  harmony  with  their  ex- 
ternal appearance.  Dr.  Walter  of  Boston  "was  a  re- 
markably handsome  man,  tall  and  well-proportioned. 
When  in  the  street  he  wore  a  long  blue  cloth  cloak  over 
his  cassock  and  gown ;  a  full-bottomed  wig,  black  silk 
hose,  and  square-quartered  shoes  with  silver  buckles. 
Happy  himself,  he  communicated  happiness  to  all  around 
him.  In  the  desk  he  read  the  glorious  service  like  one 
inspired ;  and  his  heart,  his  house,  his  purse  was  ever  open 
to  the  needy."  The  Governor  of  Rhode  Island,  who  was 
a  native  of  the  colony  and  a  resident  at  the  pleasant  town 
of  Newport,  in  the  matter  of  a  wig  was  satisfied  with 
nothing  less  than  one  made  in  England  of  the  pattern 
and  size  worn  by  the  Speaker  in  the  House  of  Commons. 
Green  and  gold,  or  purple  and  gold,  formed  the  daily 
costume  of  a  wealthy  Tory  merchant.1  It  was  not  all 
outside  show.  The  more  notable  members  of  the  British 
party  were  given  to  polite  learning,  and  spared  neither 
care  nor  money  over  the  education  of  their  sons.  In 
that  numerous  contingent  of  emigrants  which  left  the 
province  when  Boston  fell,  one  out  of  every  five  was  a 
Harvard  man.  The  colonies,  if  we  may  trust  a  compari- 
son which  occurred  to  a  lady  who  knew  them  before  the 
war,  suffered  as  much,  and  in  the  same  way,  by  the  ex- 
pulsion of  the  Loyalists  as  France,  under  Louis  the 
Fourteenth  and  ever  after,  suffered  by  the  expatriation 
of  the  Huguenots.  The  remark  went  too  far,  and  not 
exactly  in  the  right  direction  ;  but  it  cannot  be  questioned 

1  The  Articles  on  the  Rev.  William  Walter,  Joseph  Wanton,  and  Nathan 
Rogers  in  Sabine's  Loyalists. 


THE  REFUGEES 


377 


that  the  Revolution  made  America  the  poorer  by  some 
elements  which,  during  the  next  half-century,  that  country 
could  ill  afford  to  lose.1 

The  Loyalists  were  fully  persuaded  that  they  were 
more  estimable  than  the  majority  of  their  fellow-sub- 
jects; and  they  attributed  their  superiority,  whether 
real  or  fancied,  to  themselves  and  not  to  their  circum- 
stances. They  spoke  and  wrote  of  their  opponents  in  a 
tone  of  class  arrogance  which,  when  once  the  rift  came, 
made  reconciliation  impossible.  In  the  rhymed  satires 
and  political  catechisms  which  issued  from  the  Tory 
press  the  most  respected  members  of  the  popular  party 
were  held  up  to  scorn  as  the  refuse  of  mankind.  The 
delegates  to  the  Congress  were  described  as  pettifog- 
ging attorneys,  disbarred  advocates,  outlawed  smugglers, 
bankrupt  shopkeepers ;  and,  at  the  best,  as  innkeepers 
and  horsedealers  who  had  not  as  yet  gone  through  the 
Court.  The  world  was  told  how  a  bricklayer  or  carpen- 
ter would  lie  down  at  night,  and  awake  in  the  morning 
a  Lycurgus  or  a  Solon.  As  each  demagogue  in  turn, 
by  rope  or  otherwise,  went  to  his  appointed  place,  he 
would  be  hailed  as  a  brother  by  Catiline,  Jack  Cade,  and 
Cromwell ;  an  ill-assorted  trio,  it  must  be  allowed,  who 
would  have  found  some  difficulty  in  establishing  fra- 
ternity among  themselves.  History,  —  or  what  in  the 
days  before  Niebuhr  and  Mommsen  passed  for  history, 
—  was  ransacked  for  humiliating  parallels  to  the  states- 
men of  the  American  Revolution. 

"  Imperial  Rome  from  scoundrels  rose : 
Her  grandeur's  hailed  in  verse  and  prose: 
Venice  the  dregs  of  sea  compose. 

So  sprung  the  mighty  Congress. 
When  insects  vile  emerge  to  light 
They  take  their  short  inglorious  flight, 
Then  sink  again  to  native  night ; 

An  emblem  of  the  Congress." 

1  Mrs.  Grant  of  Laggan.  She  left  America  in  1 786  at  the  age  of  thirteen 
or  fourteen  ;  but  she  was  a  very  precocious  child,  and  grew  into  a  thought- 
ful woman. 


3/8  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

The  loyalist  poets  and  pamphleteers  might  have  mal- 
treated the  politicians  with  comparative  impunity  to 
themselves  and  their  cause  if  they  had  left  the  soldiers 
alone.  Men  accustomed  to  the  give  and  take  of  contro- 
versy fail  to  recognise  what  it  is,  for  quiet  obscure  people, 
to  have  those  near  and  dear  to  them  ridiculed  and  vili- 
fied in  print.  A  farmer's  family,  with  an  empty  chair 
reminding  them  of  some  one  who  was  digging  in  the 
trenches  amidst  the  cannon-balls,  or  lying  three  feet 
below  the  grass  on  Bunker's  Hill,  with  his  face  to  the 
daisies,  did  not  see  the  joke  when  they  read  how  the 
American  militia  were  awkward  cowardly  bumpkins, 
and  their  officers  scheming  upstarts. 

"  With  loud  peals  of  laughter  your  sides,  sirs,  would  crack 
To  see  General  Convict,  and  Colonel  Shoe-black, 
All  strutting  the  standard  of  Satan  beside, 
And  honest  names  using  their  black  deeds  to  hide." 

That  was  how  a  Tyrtaeus  of  the  messroom  burlesqued 
the  manly,  unpretending  figures  of  Greene  and  Thomas, 
and  the  antique  worth  of  Heath  and  Pomeroy.  Those 
must  have  been  far  gone  in  political  fanaticism  who 
could  detect  either  truth  or  humour  in  such  couplets. 
It  may  be  that,  amidst  the  distractions  of  the  period, 
the  authors  of  these  effusions  had  not  leisure  to  write 
better ;  but  it  is  strange  that  descendants  of  the  Pilgrim 
Fathers  should  have  borrowed  their  controversial  weap- 
ons from  one  or  another  Cavalier  libeller  in  the  middle 
of  the  seventeenth  century.  New  Englanders,  if  any 
people,  should  have  remembered  that  the  reproach  of 
having  earned  their  bread  by  manual  labour,  or  by  trade, 
was  habitually  levelled  at  Roundheads,  and  that  the 
sturdy  warriors  against  whom  the  imputation  was  di- 
rected cared  nothing  for  it;  nor,  when  the  battle  was 
joined,  was  it  much  consolation  to  those  among  the 
scoffers  who  had  to  face  them  in  the  field.  Seldom,  if 
ever,  have  two  assemblages  of  men,  —  divided  from 
each  other  by  four  generations,  and  a  thousand  leagues, 
—  had  so  much  in  common  as  the  army  which  fought 
against  Charles  the  First,  and  the  army  which  followed 


THE  REFUGEES  379 

Washington.  Lampoons  and  pasquinades,  on  one  side 
of  the  question  or  the  other,  were  composed  for  the 
amusement  of  partisans  who  were  prudent  enough  never 
to  quit  their  own  chimney  corner ;  but  the  hymns  which 
comforted  the  starving  shoeless  groups  around  the  camp- 
fires  at  Valley  Forge  might  have  been  sung  in  one  of 
Massey's  guard-rooms  at  Gloucester,  or  by  a  party  of 
troopers  returning  from  the  pursuit  after  Naseby.1 

Those  sorry  scribblers,  who  constituted  themselves 
exponents  of  loyalist  sentiment,  vulgarised,  and  possibly 
exaggerated,  the  intolerance  and  the  prejudices  of  their 
patrons.  But  caste-feeling,  intense,  aggressive,  and  al- 
most universal,  beyond  any  doubt  prevailed  in  the  Tory 
society  of  America ;  and  it  was  terribly  and  quite  dis- 
proportionately punished.  There  are  benighted  parts 
of  the  world  where  injustice  and  oppression,  in  cruel 
and  practical  forms,  have  survived  through  the  ages  un- 
assailed  and  unquestioned ;  but  in  a  civilised  and  high- 
spirited  community  the  far,  or  near,  future  never  fails  to 
exact  retribution  from  those  who  have  caught  the  trick 
of  disdaining  and  disparaging  the  mass  of  their  country- 
men. When  once  the  British  flag  had  been  hauled 
down  from  the  roof  of  Province  House,  Boston  would 
be  no  place  for  those  who  had  hitherto  walked  the 
streets  as  favourites  of  the  Government  and  hereditary 
tenants  of  the  public  offices.  The  moment  had  come 
when  they  must  resign  credit,  and  power,  and  salary, 
and  all  that  constituted  "  the  life  that  late  they  led," 
to  men  whom  they  disliked  and  tried  hard  to  think  that 
they  despised.  They  abandoned  their  pulpits  and  count- 

1  "  Lessons  of  war  from  Him  we  take 
And  manly  weapons  learn  to  wield. 
Strong  bows  of  steel  with  ease  we  break, 
Forced  by  our  stronger  arms  to  yield. 

"  Tis  God  that  still  supports  our  right 
His  just  revenge  our  foes  pursues. 
Tis  He  that  with  resistless  might 
Fierce  nations  to  His  power  subdues." 

The  "American  Soldier's  Hymn,"  quoted  by  Professor  Tyler  in  his  31  st 
Chapter. 


380  THE  A  AT  ERIC  AN  REVOLUTION 

ing-houses,  their  pleasant  gardens  in  the  English  style, 
and  their  mansions  shaded  with  tall  poplars  ;  and  the 
land  knew  them  no  more  by  sight,  nor,  after  a  while,  by 
name.  So  far  as  the  memory  of  them,  even  in  their  own 
neighbourhood,  was  concerned,  it  was  much  if  a  later 
generation  pointed  out  their  old  home  as  a  house  which 
was  haunted  by  Tory  ghosts.1 

The  last  days  which  the  Loyalists  of  Massachusetts 
passed  on  their  native  soil  were  disturbed  by  the  menace 
of  an  appalling  catastrophe.  The  artillerymen  of  the 
besiegers  now  had  Boston  at  their  mercy ;  and  General 
Howe  allowed  a  rumour  to  get  abroad  that,  if  his  troops 
were  harassed  during  their  embarkation,  he  should 
destroy  the  town.  The  Selectmen  of  the  municipality 
sent  a  flag  of  truce  across  the  lines,  and  implored  the 
American  Commander-in-Chief,  since  the  garrison  was 
unquestionably  on  the  eve  of  departure,  to  take  no  steps 
which  could  afford  an  excuse  for  the  consummation  of 
so  dreadful  a  threat.  From  an  official  point  of  view 
there  was  only  one  reply  to  such  an  appeal.  His  Ex- 
cellency, (the  answer  ran,)  could  take  no  notice  of  an 
unauthenticated  paper,  containing  assurances  which,  if 
accepted  at  the  American  headquarters,  did  not  in  any 
way  bind  the  British  General.  But  none  the  less  Wash- 
ington kept  his  guns  silent,  and  his  soldiers  within  their 
intrenchments  ;  and  the  preparations  for  the  removal  of 
the  British  army  went  steadily  and  securely  on.  It 
may  well  be  believed  that,  even  in  the  last  extremity, 
Howe  would  not  have  been  as  bad  as  his  word.  It 
might  be  argued  that  a  servant  of  the  Crown  was  under 
an  obligation  to  carry  out  his  Sovereign's  expressed 
wish,  and  use  "every  means  of  distressing  America." 
To  set  the  city  on  fire,  rather  than  it  should  be  the  seat 
of  Congresses  and  Committees,  and  a  rallying  centre  for 
armed  insurgents,  was  presumably  within  the  letter  of 
the  Ministerial  instructions,  and  most  assuredly  in  strict 
accordance  with  their  spirit.  Boston  was  only  waiting 

1  Sabine's  Loyalists  ;  vol.  ii.,  p.  357. 


HOWE'S  RETIREMENT  FROM  BOSTON  381 

until  the  red-coats  were  gone  in  order  to  behave  quite 
as  rebelliously  as  Norfolk  or  Falmouth ;  but  it  did  not 
share  their  fate.  In  the  opinion  of  Howe,  enough 
American  towns  had  been  offered  as  burnt  sacrifices 
upon  the  altar  of  personal  loyalty.  To  give  the  capital 
of  Massachusetts  to  the  flames  would  excite  horror 
throughout  Europe,  and  most  of  all  among  the  people 
who  had  been  his  own  political  associates  and  familiar 
friends.  He  could  not  stay  in  America  for  ever ;  and, 
if  he  returned  to  London  with  such  a  deed  on  his  fame 
and  conscience,  however  gracious  might  be  his  recep- 
tion at  the  Palace,  he  would  only  need  to  walk  half-way 
up  Saint  James  Street,  and  enter  Brooks's  Club,  in 
order  to  discover  that  not  one  of  the  men,  whose  respect 
and  good-will  he  most  valued,  would  ever  take  his  hand 
again. 

Howe,  before  the  war  was  over,  had  done  some  cruel 
things,  and  from  carelessness  or  misplaced  good-nature 
had  excused  still  more  barbarous  conduct  in  others ; 
but,  when  he  obeyed  his  better  instincts,  he  was  ever  a 
good-natured  English  gentleman.  Lord  Dartmouth,  who 
was  something  much  better  than  good-natured,  had 
long  ago  written  to  desire  that,  if  Boston  fell,  all 
should  be  done  to  save  the  friends  of  the  Government 
from  the  worst  consequences  of  their  fidelity.  Howe 
addressed  himself  strenuously  to  the  task  of  mitigating 
the  hard  destiny  of  the  fugitives.  He  had  transports 
barely  enough  for  the  conveyance  of  the  army  ;  and  it 
required  not  a  little  unselfishness  on  the  part  of  those 
responsible  for  the  conduct  of  the  embarkation  to  find 
room  for  the  Loyalists,  their  families,  and  their  posses- 
sions. In  order  to  provide  storage  for  the  effects  of 
those  unfortunate  civilians,  the  military  left  behind  and 
lost  much  property  of  their  own  which  they  could  not 
pack  into  the  ships,  and  which,  it  is  needless  to  say,  no 
patriot  could  just  then  be  found  to  buy.  The  exigencies 
of  duty,  on  a  front  of  battle  lying  within  a  few  hundred 
yards  of  an  enterprising  and  elated  adversary,  were  un- 
usually heavy  and  anxious ;  the  soldiers,  as  the  moment 


382  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

of  departure  approached,  were  with  difficulty  restrained 
from  drink  and  riot;  and  it  is  to  the  honour  of  the 
British  officers  that  all  the  time  which  could  be  spared 
from  keeping  the  besiegers  in  respect,  and  preserving 
discipline  in  barracks,  was  devoted  to  helping  those  who 
were  more  to  be  pitied  than  themselves. 

The  Loyalists  were  by  no  means  in  all  cases  a  feeble 
folk.  Many  of  them  knew  the  water-side  of  old,  and 
had  secured  for  the  transportation  of  their  goods  the 
pick  of  such  labour  as  there  was  to  be  hired.  Some 
of  them,  indeed,  understood  very  well  how  to  help  them- 
selves, in  every  acceptation  which  the  words  would  bear. 
A  certain  Crean  Brush  had  been  noisy  and  noticeable 
among  the  Tories  who  remained  in  Boston  during  the 
siege.  He  was  not  a  native  of  the  city,  nor  of  the 
colonies.  Born  in  Dublin,  he  settled  himself  in  New 
York,  and  was  appointed  to  official  posts  which,  (being 
before  his  age,)  he  contrived  to  make  very  lucrative.  In 
an  unguarded  hour  Sir  William  Howe  had  given  him 
a  commission  to  impound,  and  to  place  on  board  the 
fleet,  all  the  linen  and  woollen  in  the  town.  Brush,  at 
the  head  of  some  violent  and  dishonest  partisans,  pro- 
ceeded to  break  open  stores,  shops,  and  dwelling-houses. 
Without  observing  any  distinction  in  the  nature  of  his 
spoils,  he  loaded  a  brigantine  with  a  cargo  of  stolen 
property  worth  a  hundred  thousand  dollars.  The  ex- 
ample was  followed  by  gangs  of  seamen  from  the  royal 
fleet,  ill-watched,  and  sometimes  encouraged,  by  their 
officers.  The  soldiers  could  not  always  be  kept  from 
emulating  the  sailors ;  and  for  some  days  and  nights 
the  city  presented  frequent  scenes  of  violence  and 
pillage.  It  was  high  time  to  go.  Vast  quantities  of 
public  stores  were  abandoned  to  the  enemy,  after  having 
been  damaged  as  effectually  as  could  be  done  by  people 
who  had  begun  to  count  their  stay  at  Boston  by  half- 
hours.  The  British  officers  sacrificed  all  except  the 
most  portable  of  their  private  baggage.  They  them- 
selves, huddled  up  amidst  a  miserable  throng  of  both 
sexes  and  all  ages,  with  top-heavy  decks  and  encum- 


HOWE'S  RETIREMENT  FROM  BOSTON  383 

bered  gangways,  put  to  sea  praying  for  a  quick  passage. 
The  scene,  according  to  the  Historical  writer  in  the 
"Annual  Register,"  resembled  the  emigration  of  a  na- 
tion rather  than  the  breaking  up  of  a  garrison.  In 
Benjamin  Hallowell's  cabin  "there  were  thirty-seven 
persons,  —  men,  women,  and  children ;  servants,  mas- 
ters, and  mistresses;  obliged  to  pig  together  on  the 
floor,  there  being  no  berths."  Mr.  Hallowell,  nine 
months  previously,  had  been  hunted  into  Boston  by 
a  cavalcade  of  patriots  ;  and  this  was  how  he  left  it. 
Such  are  the  lesser  miseries  of  a  Revolution. 

The  fleet  was  bound  for  Canada,  as  was  reported  both 
in  the  city  and  in  the  American  camp  ;  but  Washington 
thought  it  possible  that  the  British  staff  had  dissemi- 
nated the  story  for  a  blind.  He  apprehended  that  the 
real  destination  might  be  New  York,  and  made  his  dis- 
positions accordingly.  But,  when  the  leading  ships  had 
finally  threaded  the  islands  and  gained  the  open  sea, 
they  steered  for  Halifax  in  Nova  Scotia,  a  small  town 
on  an  inhospitable  coast,  where  the  passengers,  armed 
and  unarmed,  would  find  themselves  hardly  less  crowded 
and  uncomfortable  than  on  board  the  transports.  The 
reputation  of  the  quarters  towards  which  they  were  mov- 
ing was  expressed  vigorously  and  compactly  throughout 
the  convoy  by  means  of  the  proverb,  "  Hell,  Hull,  and 
Halifax."  l  Some  of  the  Royal  battle-ships  were  left  be- 
hind when  their  consorts  sailed;  but  the  captains  did  not 
venture  to  remain  at  their  moorings  within  the  harbour. 
The  vessels  dropped  down  to  Nantasket  Road,  well  out 
of  harm's  way,  where  they  lay  off  and  on  for  some 
while  to  come,  much  to  the  annoyance  of  the  inhabitants 
of  Boston. 

That  was  the  only  cross  in  their  lot.     Every  Patriot 

1  It  was  an  old  Yorkshire  saying,  dating  from  our  Civil  War,  which  the 
British  officers  applied  on  the  present  occasion  to  the  Halifax  of  Nova 
Scotia.  "A  cursed  cold  wintry  place,  even  yet;  "  said  one  of  them  on  the 
I yth  March.  "  Nothing  to  eat;  less  to  drink.  Bad  times,  my  dear  friend. 
The  displeasure  I  feel  from  the  very  small  share  I  have  in  our  present  insig- 
nificancy is  so  great  that  1  do  not  know  the  thing  so  det yerate  I  would  not 
undertake  in  order  to  change  our  situation." 


384  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

who  had  remained  within  the  walls  was  his  own  man 
once  again ;  and  the  Patriots  in  the  camp  without  were 
impatient  to  learn  how  their  besieged  brethren  looked 
after  ten  months  of  hardship,  and,  (what  to  people  of 
their  nature  was  perhaps  as  trying,)  of  taciturnity,  and 
enforced  abstinence  from  public  affairs  and  from  com- 
mercial business.  While  Howe's  rearguard  were  push- 
ing off  their  boats  at  one  extremity  of  the  town,  General 
Putnam,  at  the  head  of  a  thousand  men  who  had  had 
the  smallpox,  entered  it  at  the  other.  Three  days 
afterwards,  when  it  was  ascertained  that  the  danger  of 
infection  was  less  than  had  been  feared,  the  main  body 
of  the  American  army  marched  through  the  streets 
amidst  cheers  and  smiles ;  although  it  was  observed  that 
the  faces  which  filled  the  windows  bore  marks  of  hunger, 
and  of  the  gloom  which  had  so  long  oppressed  the  city. 
But  joy  had  returned,  and  abundance  with  it;  and 
both  the  one  and  the  other  had  come  as  permanent 
residents,  and  not  as  passing  guests.  On  the  twenty- 
second  of  March  a  great  concourse  of  people  thronged 
into  Boston.  They  came  home  by  thousands,  to  find 
most,  but  not  all,  of  those  whom  they  had  left  there ; 
and  we  are  told,  though  we  do  not  require  to  be  told, 
that  on  that  day  the  whole  place  was  in  tears  and 
laughter.  They  were  glad  once  more  to  roam  about 
their  beloved  town, — their  Carthage  which,  in  spite  of 
the  Latin  quoted  at  Westminster,  after  all  was  not  to 
be  destroyed.  When  they  surveyed  and  reckoned  up 
their  losses,  they  enjoyed  the  surprise  of  finding  that  the 
waste  and  wreck  of  their  property  was  not  so  extensive 
as  seriously  to  spoil  their  pleasure.  John  Hancock's 
fine  well-decorated  mansion  seemed  very  slightly  the 
worse  for  a  hostile  occupation.  "The  town,"  Washing- 
ton wrote  to  him,  "  although  it  has  suffered  greatly,  is 
not  in  so  bad  a  state  as  I  expected  to  find  it ;  and  I  have 
a  particular  pleasure  in  being  able  to  inform  you,  Sir, 
that  your  house  has  received  no  damage  worth  mention- 
ing. Your  furniture  is  in  tolerable  order,  and  the  family 
pictures  are  all  left  entire  and  untouched."  When  the 


HOWE'S  RETIREMENT  FROM  BOSTON  38$ 

President  of  Congress  came  off  so  easily,  it  may  be 
believed  that  little  was  missing  out  of  habitations  which 
presented  fewer  temptations  to  the  marauder,  and  whose 
owners  exercised  less  prominent  and  invidious  functions. 
Even  those  ancient  wooden  dwellings  which  had  been 
pulled  down  for  fuel  were  pronounced  to  be  well  away 
for  reasons  connected  with  the  future  health  and  beauty 
of  the  town.  Everything,  to  the  eyes  of  a  true  Bos- 
tonian,  was  thenceforward  to  be  for  the  best  in  the  best 
possible  of  cities.  A  visit  prompted  by  eager  curiosity, 
and  attended  by  well-founded  satisfaction,  was  that 
which  was  paid  to  the  British  fortifications.1  Soldiers, 
and  yet  more  the  parents  and  wives  of  soldiers,  gazed 
with  shuddering  thankfulness  on  those  formidable  works 
which  it  had  cost  so  much  labour  to  erect,  and  so  little 
bloodshed  to  capture.  Doctor  John  Warren,  who  had 
repaired  to  the  spot  where  he  could  stand  as  close  to 
his  brother  as  was  now  possible  for  him,  has  left  a  de- 
scription of  the  fortress  which  Howe's  engineers  had 
erected  on  the  peninsula  of  Charlestown.  "When  I 
came,"  he  wrote,  "  to  Bunker's  Hill  I  found  it  exceed- 
ingly strong ;  the  front  parapet  about  thirteen  feet  high 
composed  of  earth  contained  in  plank  supported  by  huge 
timber."  The  same  care  and  skill  had  been  bestowed 
wherever  they  were  required  ;  and  Washington  reported 
that  every  avenue  to  Boston  had  been  fortified  in  such  a 
manner  that  the  town  was  almost  impregnable.  And 
yet,  —  by  dint  of  endurance,  and  self-control,  and  rigid 
reticence,  followed  by  strong  decision,  and  sudden  action, 
when  the  proper  moment  came,  —  he  had  made  that 

1 "  March  1 7.  This  morning  about  Nine  aclock  there  was  A  Larem  and 
our  people  went  into  the  boats  for  to  go  to  Boston.  General  Sulliven  With 
a  party  of  men  Went  to  Bunker  Hill  and  took  posesien  of  it. 

"  This  afternoon  I  went  Down  to  charlestown  neck  in  order  to  go  over 
to  Bunker  hill.  But  the  Sentinals  Stopt  me. 

"  March  18.  This  morning  I  went  to  Bunker  Hill  and  Charlestown  For 
to  see  the  Ruens  of  the  Town. 

"  March  25.    I  cooked  this  day.    I  have  ben  up  bacon  Hill  this  day." 

And  so  at  last  David  How  got  into  Boston,  and  saw  the  view  from 
Beacon  Hill  on  the  North  of  the  Common,  —  the  site  where  the  State 
House  now  stands. 

VOL.  I.  *C 


386  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

stronghold  his  own  at  an  expenditure  of  less  than  a 
score  of  New  England  lives. 

The  prizes  which  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  victors 
were  well  worth  securing.  Great  numbers  of  fine  can- 
non lay  about  in  the  batteries.  They  had  been  spiked, 
and  otherwise  mutilated ;  but  their  repair  was  within 
the  resources  of  an  army  containing  excellent  black- 
smiths, among  the  best  of  whom  was  Nathanael  Greene, 
the  second  best  of  the  generals.  There  were  huge  piles 
of  shot  and  shells,  and  a  great  quantity  of  miscellaneous 
stores.  Washington's  quartermaster-general  estimated 
the  contents  of  the  magazines  at  something  between 
twenty-five,  and  thirty,  thousand  pounds  in  value.1  But 
all  that  the  Americans  found  on  land  was  insignificant 
as  compared  with  what  they  captured  at  sea.  Even 
while  the  men  of  war  lingered  in  Nantasket  Road,  an 
armed  schooner  hailing  from  Marblehead  had  already 
picked  up  a  store-ship  from  Cork,  which  carried  fifteen 
hundred  barrels  of  powder  in  her  hold.  After  the  lapse 
of  two  months,  in  consequence  of  a  hostile  demonstra- 
tion by  the  Continental  army  assisted  by  provincial 
militia,  the  royal  squadron  took  its  departure  from  the 
scene.  An  imaginative  population,  on  the  look-out  for 
anniversaries,  pleased  itself  by  remembering  that,  ac- 
cording to  the  provisions  of  the  Act  devised  by  the 
British  Ministry  for  the  ruin  of  Boston,  the  fourteenth 
of  June,  1774,  had  been  the  latest  date  for  trading 
vessels  to  leave  or  enter  the  condemned  harbour.  And 
now  the  fourteenth  of  June,  1776,  was  the  last  day  on 
which  the  last  of  the  Ministerial  war-ships  was  seen  in 
Boston  waters.  Then  began  an  uninterrupted  harvest 
for  the  colonial  privateers.  They  made  an  easy  prey  of 
the  crazy  merchantmen  which,  as  a  substitute  for  swift 
frigates,  were  bringing  the  reinforcements  for  Howe's 
army.  When  these  belated  and  ill-adapted  vessels  at 
length  reached  the  coast  of  Massachusetts,  the  royal 
fleet  had  gone  for  good,  and  the  whole  bay  between 
headland  and  headland  was  alive  with  American  cruisers. 

1  Washington  to  the  President  of  Congress;   March  19,  1776. 


HOWE'S  RETIREMENT  FROM  BOSTON  387 

Four  transports  were  captured;  and  the  Highland 
soldiers  on  board  at  last  reached  their  destination,  but 
reached  it  as  prisoners  of  war.1  The  Patriots  learned, 
with  a  satisfaction  which  few  will  grudge  them,  that  the 
brigantine  chartered  by  Crean  Brush  was  taken,  with 
himself  and  all  his  booty  on  board  of  her.  From  that 
time  forward  his  life  was  one  series  of  misfortunes, 
until  it  came  to  a  bad  end.2 

In  their  relief  and  exultation  the  inhabitants  of  the 
rescued  city  were  not  heedless  of  the  dangers  which 
the  future  might  have  in  store  for  them.  As  soon  as  the 
royal  sails  were  over  the  horizon,  Boston  began  to  take 
precautions  against  the  possible  contingency  of  their 
reappearance.  The  British,  on  the  eve  of  their  retire- 
ment, had  demolished  those  works  on  Castle  Island 
which  commanded  the  main  entrance  to  the  harbour; 
and  the  municipal  authorities  now  applied  themselves 
vigorously  and  expeditiously  to  the  task  of  restoring 
the  ramparts.  Every  able-bodied  townsman  gave  two 
days  a  week  of  voluntary  labour,3  working  as  Themis- 
tocles,  at  a  famous  crisis,  made  the  Athenians  work  on 
the  Long  Walls  which  led  from  their  city  to  the  Piraeus. 
Boston,  (to  use  a  good  old  military  term,)  was  soon  safe 
from  insult.  A  hostile  squadron,  whose  commander 
was  not  prepared  to  sacrifice  some  of  his  masts  and  a 
large  proportion  of  his  crews,  could  not  thenceforward 
penetrate  except  in  a  thick  fog;  and  even  then  only 

1 "  June  1 6.  This  morning  our  Privit esters  Spy  a  large  Brig  Bound  from 
Scotland  to  Boston  and  they  chased  Them  all  Day  and  at  Night  they  had  a 
Smart  fight  and  took  them. 

"June  17.  This  dav  the  Prisoners  Ware  brought  to  Boston.  There 
being  upwards  of  200  Hilanders  besides  other  valuable  loading  : 

"June  19.  This  morning  our  Priviteteres  took  a  Ship.  She  had  on 
board  112  Hilanders  with  a  Cuterments  all  fixed  for  war."  David  How1 1 
Diarv  for  1776. 

2  After  a  detention  of  more  than  a  year  and  a  half,  Crean  Brush  escaped 
from  prison,  and  made  his  way  into  New  York.      He  applied   to  the 
British  Commander-in-Chief  to  compensate  his  losses,  but  was  told  by  Si 
Henry  Clinton  that  his  "conduct  merited  them,  and  more."     Brush  soon 
afterwards  committed  suicide. 

«  Travels  through  the  Interior  Parts  of  America,  in  a  Series  of  Letter* 
by  an  Officer.  London,  1791.  Letter  XLVIII. 

X.  2 


388  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

with  much  better  pilots  than  the  class  of  New  England 
mariners  who  would  consent  to  hire  out  their  services 
for  such  a  purpose.  No  admiral,  —  and  least  of  all  one 
of  those  political  admirals  whom  Sandwich  was  in  the 
habit  of  appointing,  —  would  feel  comfortable  when  he 
opened  a  sealed  order  directing  him  to  place  his  ships 
within  cannon-shot  of  the  wharves  of  Boston. 

Making  reference  to  the  proceedings  of  the  English 
Ministry,  Frederic  of  Prussia,  as  was  not  unusual  with 
him,  employed  the  language  of  a  book  which  he  loved 
better  to  quote  than  to  read.  "  When  I  reflect,"  he 
said,  "on  the  conduct  of  that  Government  in  the  war 
with  their  colonies,  I  am  almost  tempted  to  say  what  the 
theologians  maintain  with  regard  to  Providence,  that 
their  ways  are  not  ours."  And  indeed  they  were  not. 
North  and  Sandwich  resembled  Frederic  as  war-ministers 
even  less  than  Gage  resembled  him  as  a  general,  or 
George  the  Third  as  a  monarch.  Bunker's  Hill  had  been 
a  soldier's  battle ;  but  the  responsibility  for  the  cam- 
paign of  which  it  formed  an  episode  lay  with  the  place- 
men and  their  Royal  master.  They  had  contrived 
among  them  to  bring  about  the  discomfiture  of  a  val- 
iant army,  responsive  to  discipline,  and  containing  more 
than  a  due  proportion  of  distinguished  or  promising  offi- 
cers. They  had  involved  it  in  almost  every  calamity 
which  could  befall  a  military  force,  except  disgrace. 
They  had  so  managed  matters  that,  in  a  region  over- 
flowing with  plenty,  their  troops  had  been  fed  from 
Leadenhall  Market,  as  an  orator  of  the  Opposition 
cleverly  and  not  untruly  put  it.1  Burke  was  reported 
to  have  said  that,  though  two  huncTFett  pounds  a  man 
had  been  spent  on  salt  beef  and  sour  crout,  our  garrison 
could  not  have  remained  ten  days  longer  in  Boston  un- 
less the  heavens  had  rained  down  quails  and  manna. 
And  yet,  much  as  the  English  had  suffered  during  the 
course  of  the  siege  from  the  scarcity  and  badness  of 
their  food,  in  the  last  resort  they  were  refused  the  com- 

1  The  phrase  was  Lord  Effingham's.  Parliamentary  History  ;  vol.  viii., 
P- 


HOWE'S  RETIREMENT  FROM  BOSTON  389 

parative  satisfaction  of  having  yielded  to  famine,  and 
not  to  force.  The  Government  despatched  three  thou- 
sand British  infantry  to  the  Carolinas,  on  an  ill-considered 
and  ill-conducted  expedition,  at  the  moment  when  Howe 
most  needed  to  be  strong.  The  reinforcements  which 
were  sent  to  him  from  home  arrived  two  months  too  late  ; 
and  so  it  came  to  pass  that  the  neglected  General  was,  in 
the  end,  not  starved  but  manoeuvred  out  of  his  positions. 
The  acts  of  aggressive  warfare  sanctioned  or  condoned 
by  the  Ministers  were  as  futile  as  their  defensive  ar- 
rangements, and  had  consequences  most  disastrous  to 
the  national  interests.  They  had  not  occupied  a  single 
square  furlong  of  soil,  fortified  or  open,  in  any  of  the 
colonies ;  but  they  had  shelled  three  towns,  had  sent 
into  the  Gazette  a  score  of  loyal  merchants,  and  had  ren- 
dered a  few  hundred  families  homeless.  They  had 
alienated  all  the  neutral  opinion  in  America,  and  had 
lighted  a  flame  of  resentment  against  Great  Britain  which 
they  continued  to  feed  with  fresh  fuel  until  it  grew  so  hot 
that  it  did  not  burn  itself  out  for  a  couple  of  lifetimes. 

England  had  never 'reaped  so  little  glory  or  advantage 
from  so  great  an  expenditure  of  money,  and  after  so 
much  preliminary  swagger  on  the  part,  not  of  the  peo- 
ple who  were  to  pay  or  the  soldiers  who  were  to  fight, 
but  of  the  statesmen  who  had  already  begun  to  blunder. 
Colonel  Barr6,  in  a  speech  rich  with  traditional  know- 
ledge, and  personal  observation,  of  war,  declared  that 
this  unsuccessful  effort  to  keep  our  ground  in  one  small 
corner  of  our  own  empire  had  cost  the  Treasury  half  as 
much  again  as  the  operations  of  the  year  1704,  in  which 
our  armies  were  conquering  all  over  Europe  from  Blen- 
heim to  Gibraltar.  Barre,  however,  had  not  occasion  to 
go  outside  the  memory  of  the  youngest  of  his  audience. 
No  long  interval  had  elapsed  since  Warburg  and  Plassey, 
—  since  the  defeat  of  Montcalm,  the  conquest  of  Ha- 
vanna,  and  Hawke's  victory  off  the  coast  of  Brittany  ; 
but  during  that  interval  a  process  had  been  going  for- 
ward the  effects  of  which  were  now  manifest.  George 
the  Third  had  at  length  accomplished  his  purpose.  He 


390  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

had  rooted  out  frankness,  courage,  and  independence 
from  the  councils  of  the  State ;  but  he  had  pulled  up 
along  with  them  other  qualities  which  his  policy,  when 
brought  to  a  trial,  could  not  afford  to  dispense  with. 
His  Cabinet  was  now  exclusively  composed  of  men, 
willing  to  pursue  ends  which  he  dictated,  but  incapa- 
ble of  discerning,  or  rightly  directing,  the  means  by 
which  alone  those  ends  could  be  attained. 


APPENDICES 

APPENDIX  I 

(See  page  33) 
Eton  in  the  Days  of  Fox 

THE  muniment-rooms  of  our  old  families  are  rich  in  curious 
notices  of  the  educational  conditions  under  which  British  states- 
men of  that  day  formed  their  earliest  ideas  of  the  habitual  rela- 
tions that  ought  to  exist  between  man  and  man.  Among  them 
is  a  typical  story  dating  from  the  time  when  the  memory  of 
Charles  Fox  was  still  fresh  at  Eton.  One  George  Harlow,  in 
January,  1779,  thus  wrote  from  the  Queen's  Palace  to  Sir 
Michael  de  Fleming.  "  Give  me  leave  to  call  to  your  re- 
membrance an  adventure  which  happened  about  13  or  14 
years  ago  at  Windsor.  Myself  and  a  friend  went  from  Rich- 
mond lodge  to  Windsor  to  see  the  Castle.  We  dined  at  the 
Swan  Inn,  and  looking  out  of  the  window  we  saw  a  number  of 
Eton  scholars  coming  over  the  bridge,  and,  as  they  passed  the 
window,  you,  Sir  Michael,  was  pleased  peremptory  to  demand 
my  name ;  and  I  not  being  acquainted  with  the  manners  of 
Eton  scholars,  and  likewise  stranger  to  your  quality,  refused  to 
satisfy  your  curiosity ;  on  which  you,  and  I  believe  a  score 
of  your  schoolfellows,  jumped  in  at  the  window,  and  threatened 
destruction  to  us,  if  we  did  not  resolve  you.  My  friend  told 
you  his  name  ;  but  before  I  had  time  to  reflect  you  took  up  my 
whip,  and  with  the  butt  end  of  it  levelled  a  blow  at  my  head, 
the  marks  of  which  I  now  carry,  which  stunned  me  for  some 
minutes.  When  I  recovered  you  was  standing  before  me,  and 
told  me  I  was  not  hurt  but  that  I  bled  damnably.  However, 
you  obliged  me  to  tell  my  name,  which  done  you  swore  I  was 
a  good  fellow,  and  offered  me  any  recompense  for  my  broken 
head,  and  said  you  was  sorry  for  what  had  happened.  I  was 


3Q2  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

lately  telling  this  story  to  a  friend  who  advised  me  to  make 
myself  known,  not  doubting  but  you  would  use  your  interest  to 
remove  me  to  a  place  of  less  confinement  than  I  have  at  present 
in  his  Majesty's  household.  If  I  should  be  so  happy  as  to  meet 
your  favour,  and  succeed,  I  shall  for  ever  remember  you  and 
the  adventure  at  Windsor  with  pleasure,  and  consider  my  scar 
as  the  promoter  of  my  happiness." 

How  agreeably  a  youth,  who  had  a  tolerant  tutor  and  an 
obliging  dame,  might  pass  the  later  years  of  his  school  life  is 
narrated  in  a  letter  written  in  the  summer  quarter  of  1767. 
"  I  believe  Mr.  Roberts  is  fixed  upon  to  be  my  tutor,  who  is 
the  only  man  in  the  place  I  have  any  regard  for.  I  sincerely 
think  him  the  most  sensible  man  I  ever  came  near  in  my  life, 
and  has  behaved  himself  so  good  natured  to  me  all  through  the 
Remove  that  I  shall  always  have  a  very  great  regard  for  him. 
Mrs.  Sturgess  is  very  good  natured  to  the  boys,  and  behaves 
herself  very  freely  amongst  us  ;  now  and  then  gives  a  bottle  of 
wine  or  a  bowl  of  punch  which  she  makes  very  good.  I  always 
wish  your  company  to  partake.  In  short  we  are  very  happy. 
I  take  no  other  amusement  here  but  tennis,  never  enter  the 
billiard  rooms.  Hulse  is  our  best  player.  He  was  to  play  a 
set  with  a  gentleman  last  week  for  twenty  guineas,  but  the  gen- 
tleman was  afraid  to  play  him." 


APPENDIX   II 

(See  page  146) 
Fox's  letters  to  his  Mother 

"  MY  dear  Mother,"  (Charles  Fox  wrote  in  the  winter  of 
1773-4,)  "  in  regard  to  what  you  say  of  my  father's  feelings,  I 
am  sure  if  you  could  have  known  how  very  miserable  you  have 
made  me  you  would  not  have  said  it.  To  be  loved  by  you  and 
him  has  always  been,  (indeed  I  am  no  Hypocrite,  whatever  I 
may  be,)  the  first  desire  of  my  life.  The  reflection  that  I  have 
behaved  in  many  respects  ill  to  you  is  almost  the  only  painful 
one  I  have  ever  experienced.  That  my  extreme  imprudence 
and  dissipation  has  given  both  of  you  uneasiness  is  what  I  have 
long  known,  and  I  am  sure  I  may  call  those  who  really  know 


APPENDICES  393 

me  to  witness  how  much  that  thought  has  embittered  my  life. 
I  own  I  lately  began  to  flatter  myself  that,  particularly  with 
you,  and  in  a  great  degree  with  my  father,  I  had  regained  that 
sort  of  confidence  which  was  once  the  greatest  pride  of  my 
life ;  and  I  am  sure  I  don't  exaggerate  when  I  say  that,  since  I 
formed  these  flattering  hopes,  I  have  been  the  happiest  being 
in  the  universe.  I  hate  to  make  professions,  and  yet  I  think  I 
may  venture  to  say  that  my  conduct  in  the  future  shall  be  such 
as  to  satisfy  you  more  than  my  past.  Indeed,  indeed,  my  dear 
Mother,  no  son  ever  loved  a  father  and  mother  as  I  do.  Pray, 
my  dear  mother,  consider  how  very  miserable  you  have  made 
me,  and  pity  me.  I  do  not  know  what  to  write  or  how  to 
leave  off  writing,  but  you  may  be  assured  that  no  son  ever  felt 
more  duty,  respect,  gratitude,  or  love  than  I  do  for  both  of  you, 
and  that  it  is  in  your  power,  by  restoring  me  your  usual  confi- 
dence and  affection,  or  depriving  me  of  it,  to  make  me  the 
most  unhappy  or  contented  of  men." 

In  a  subsequent  letter  to  his  mother,  Charles  excused  him- 
self for  not  having  come  to  see  his  father  at  Bath  on  account 
of  having  spent  the  morning  at  the  Treasury,  and  being  en- 
gaged in  the  afternoon  to  dine,  and  talk  business,  with  the 
Attorney-General ;  —  a  line  of  defence  which  must  have  ap- 
peared most  valid  in  the  eyes  of  Lord  Holland.  "  If  it  is  any 
comfort  to  him,"  the  son  goes  on  to  write,  "  to  think  that  his 
unexampled  kindness  has  delivered  me  from  certain  and  abso- 
lute ruin,  and  given  me  as  fair  a  prospect  as  Man  can  desire,  I 
am  sure  that  is  a  satisfaction  he  may  enjoy  very  completely.  If 
it  turns  out  as  I  am  confident  it  will,  only  consider  the  situation 
I  may  now  be  in,  and  that  which  must  have  inevitably  and 
almost  immediately  been  my  lot  if  nothing  had  been  done  ;  and 
I  am  sure  you  will  reflect  upon  it  with  pleasure.  Adieu,  my 
dear  mother,  and  Believe  me,  that,  as  there  never  was  a  man  so 
obliged  as  I  have  been,  so  there  never  was  one  more  sensible 
of  his  obligations." 


394  THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

APPENDIX   III 

(See  page  162) 
Franklin,  and  the  Signing  of  the  Treaty  with  France 

THE  appearance  of  this  volume  brought  me  frequent  private 
communications  from  America ;  and  the  work  was  the  subject 
of  many  articles  both  there,  and  on  this  side  the  water.  There 
were  those  who  differed  from  my  conclusions,  and  who  thought 
that  some  considerations  had  been  neglected,  while  others  were 
placed  in  undue  prominence ;  but  in  only  one  case  was  I 
charged  with  inaccuracy  in  facts.  Blackwood's  Magazine,  of 
March  1899,  contained  a  paper  on  my  book,  not  of  a  laudatory 
character,  in  which  the  following  passage  occurs.  "The 
author,"  (so  the  reviewer  writes,)  "gives  us  the  old  story  that 
Franklin  wore  at  Versailles,  on  signing  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence, the  very  coat  which  he  wore  when  he  was  insulted 
regarding  those  letters  by  Wedderburne  in  the  Privy  Council. 
Mr.  Wharton,  in  his  Appendix  to  his  '  Digest  of  American  Inter- 
national Law,'  has  long  ago,  it  seems  to  us,  disposed  of  that 
story.  It  ought  so  to  die." 

To  a  man  at  my  time  of  life,  not  unacquainted  with  literary 
history,  the  haphazard  slap-dash  vigour,  with  which  Blackwood 
still  belabours  one  whom  it  regards  as  a  Whig  writer,  gives  a 
pleasing  impression  of  the  continuity  of  human  affairs.  I  made 
no  reference  whatsoever  to  the  story  of  Franklin  having  worn  his 
spotted  velvet  coat  when  he  signed  the  treaty  establishing  the 
Independence  of  America  in  September  1783.  That  story,  of 
course,  has  been  amply  disproved  by  Mr.  Caleb  Whitefoord, 
the  official  secretary  to  the  Commission,  in  a  letter  of  July  the 
nth,  1785.  I  spoke  expressly  of  Franklin  having  worn  the 
suit  when  signing  the  treaty  of  amity  and  commerce  with 
France,  at  Paris,  in  February  1778.  That  circumstance  rests 
on  the  authority  of  an  eye-witness,  Doctor  Edward  Bancroft, 
a  Fellow  of  the  Royal  Society,  and  an  intimate  friend  of  Frank- 
lin. Doctor  Bancroft  was  present  when  Wedderburne  addressed 
the  Privy  Council  in  January  1 7  74  ;  and  he  saw  Franklin  daily 
at  Paris  in  February  1778.  Bancroft's  account  may  be  found 
in  the  works  of  Franklin,  as  edited  by  Jared  Sparks,  in  Vol- 
ume IV,  page  45 1 . 


&a 


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